


Press Play to Start

by layersofsilence



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America Reverse Bang 2019, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 05:32:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19266823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layersofsilence/pseuds/layersofsilence
Summary: Steve still doesn’t understand; and then he does, or he thinks he does, in a burst of clarity that he immediately wishes he hadn’t gotten.The thing is that it’s not possible. James shifts his position ever so slightly; his shoulders shift smoothly under his tac gear, and it’snot possiblethat Steve could be programming anotherhuman.CA:TWS AU - in which Steve Rogers, SHIELD agent, finds out that HYDRA is not so old and defeated a foe, and that the Winter Soldier is more than a whispered rumour.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for the caprbb 2019! thank you so much to [talkplaylove](https://talkplaylove.tumblr.com/post/190128027799/press-play-to-start-a-caprbb-2019-collab-art) for the very inspirational art & banner - please go and check out the rest of her work! shoutout also to my rl friend turned beta who doesn't like fanfiction but wanted to read my work and rub my typos in my face anyway (i switched out the names and we both pretended phrases like "metal arm" weren't fandom signifiers, we have fun together). lastly, so many thanks to the very wonderful slack chat who fuelled me, you guys are the best

There’s a television in the corner of Steve’s open office, and it’s permanently on WHiH World News. This is more of a joke than anything else: SHIELD prides itself on being ahead of the news, and Doug in the corner apparently has a lot of money to burn on an April Fool’s joke on the floor. The most noteworthy thing that’d ever happened with it was a passive-aggressive fight about whether it should be “barely audible” or “completely muted” which eventually resolved in favour of the former.

The point is, Steve’s not sure he’s ever watched the thing seriously in the several months that it’s been there. At best it registers as droning background noise in the distance, and its five o’clock news jingle is the signal for everyone to start packing up heading home; statistically, a news story was going to pique Steve’s interest eventually, but it still feels exceedingly strange when he finds himself paying attention to the bronzed and highlighted news anchors.

The story itself is small, insignificant - it’d have to be, to have slipped under SHIELD’s radar. An eccentric millionaire has had her house broken into, and refuses to talk about what’s missing. It wouldn’t even be that unusual except for the fact that this particular eccentric millionaire happens to be a scientist who’d developed a ridiculously complex home security system to protect her work, and _that_ wouldn’t be unusual if Steve didn’t recognise said security system - but he does, because he’d programmed a way around it into the SHIELD system not even two weeks ago. Nobody had acknowledged that it was based off anything, but Steve’s not an idiot. He does his research. Functionally, the system on the news and the system he’d programmed a way around are the same.

And maybe he would even let that coincidence slide, except that the mysterious thief in the news had used exactly the same methods to get past it that Steve had proposed, a strange mixture of artificially engineered earthquakes, localised electromagnetic pulses, and judicious use of laser cutters that surely only SHIELD could have provided. WHiH keeps cutting to a picture of a slightly smoking hole in the ground, the anchors discussing it with almost manic glee, contemplating the thief’s possible superpowers, their resources, their cunning. Steve gives things as much benefit of the doubt as the next guy, but this is too much to swallow.

Even so, leaving the situation un-swallowed leads to some pretty dire thoughts. It means, probably, that someone has gotten into the SHIELD network. He blinks to find that the television has shifted gears while he’s been thinking, and he’s inadvertently watching an advertisement for a bizarre baby onesie. That sets the tone for the rest of the day; he’s never been so relieved to hear the five o’clock news jingle. He’s never lingered to try and hear the news amidst the end-of-day purge, either, but there’s a first time for everything. The theft is given exactly one sentence of time before being unceremoniously overshadowed by a start-up company trying to make it big by selling chin straps to attach to subway rails, which seems like a quantitatively terrible idea.

He spends the evening on his laptop, trying to figure out how long SHIELD’s been compromised, and the results are bleak. It feels like the longer he looks, the more he recognises - a house of particular design destroyed in a particular way; a human camp found twenty feet up a fairly unique tree in a decidedly off-limits area of a national park; a café owner arrested for illegal weapons found above the ceiling panels in their toilets, initially unnoticed because said panels had been painted to look like stone. None of those mean anything on their own - maybe they don’t even mean anything when they’re put together - but they’re all things that Steve has programmed, at some point.

It’d happened like this: Steve, having performed well during the annual strategy-exercises week, had been tapped to put some work into the more experimental department of SHIELD. Specifically, he’d been put onto a vaguely gamified program called the Soldier Simulation, where he was given a set of limitations and told to find a way to complete various missions. He’d worked on a good few projects by now, found it satisfying and sort of fun, assumed that this was part of creating a better mission-development program for field agents.

But everything he’d programmed had been hypothetical. Or so he’d thought.

The more he turns it all over in his head, all these too-strange coincidences, the more it seems like it can’t be the result of a simple hacking job. So many of his directives had been location-specific, mission-specific. Perhaps if a group was opportunistic enough - and rich, and well-equipped - they could put a handful of his programmed suggestions into action.

But for an outside party to have the means, motive, and opportunity to use what feels like a vast majority of Steve’s programming feels impossible. The odds of that were - nonexistent, really. Except that opened up another, worse line of thought: that someone inside SHIELD was exploiting the system for their own purposes. Abruptly, he’s very glad that he’d attempted to gather additional proof before reporting to someone.

Steve’s stomach pulls him out of his reverie with a pointed, unhappy grumble. His flat is dark. Washington glows through his window, and the Friday night crowd is hitting its loudest point. He briefly entertains the thought of going to bed, but with another pointed complaint from his stomach he gives up and goes to the twenty-four hour cafe two blocks away. It’s full of drunk, morose people complaining about politics, but that’s exactly what he deserves for coming out this late on a Friday evening.

~*~

Saturday morning dawns bright and unfairly early, and Steve is pretty sure that Sam and Sharon both figure out that something’s up with him the moment they see him; to be fair, this is not a great feat of deduction, because he’s late for their run, on the verge of dropping his coffee cup, and wearing his shirt inside out.

“Jesus, Steve,” Sam says, as Sharon rescues his coffee and promptly undermines the good deed by taking a sip. “What happened to you?”

“I woke up late.” It’s the truth, but definitely not the whole truth: he’d woken up late because he’d slept badly, and he’d slept badly because - well, he’s not at liberty to discuss that with Sam, or even with Sharon, because he’d signed a series of NDAs before being allowed to touch the Soldier program. It’d seemed like normal procedure then, but spun itself into something much more sinister now.

“If you say so,” Sam says, watching him carefully. Steve avoids his eyes, accidentally meets Sharon’s gaze, and promptly looks at the ground.

“Shall we?” he asks, and they set off - strictly in line, which is the only way that they’re able to run together without it devolving into a competition.

Usually, Steve can lose himself in a decent run. Even all these years after the heart surgery, there’s a small part of him that’s spitefully, fiercely joyful about being able to exert himself against all odds, against what everyone had told him when he was even smaller than he is now.  
Today he can’t even manage a smooth run, tripping half a dozen times and stumbling into Sam to boot. If he’d hoped to pretend he was fine the chances of that are utterly gone by the time the three of them stumble to a halt.

“Seriously, Steve,” Sharon is the one to say, after exchanging a not-so-subtle look with Sam. “Something's clearly wrong.”

“It's -” Steve starts, but the two of them know him well enough to know that he's going to try and claim they it's fine, and they both shoot him almost identical sceptical looks before the word is even out of his mouth. “Alright,” he relents. “It's not fine. But it's a work thing, and you know how they get with the NDAs.”

“Ugh,” Sam mutters, and even Sharon makes a face before looking around suspiciously, as though SHIELD will see this moment of sub-optimal sentiment towards them and take measures against it. But it does get them to drop the issue - they all know what it’s like to work for paranoid military departments. Hell, there are some things that Sam still refuses to talk about when it comes to his service, even though he’s the only one of them who’s out.

“If it gets too serious -” Sharon starts, the offer hanging in the air.

“I can’t even talk to other SHIELD agents,” Steve says apologetically. She whistles, and Sam’s eyebrows raise.

“They’re really serious about that program of yours,” he says - and to his credit, he is only fishing very slightly.

“You could say that,” Steve admits, and now it is he who looks around, vaguely wondering whether SHIELD could hear him, what they’d do if they could. It would seem paranoid - a lot of his thoughts about this would seem paranoid - but SHIELD practically runs on paranoia. “I think they’re serious about every program, though.”

Sharon snorts and stretches down to touch her toes. “You’re not wrong,” she says to the ground. “Well, good luck. I hope it gets sorted out soon.”

“Me too,” Steve says. And then says it again, under his breath and to himself, as though this will help at all. “Me too.”

~*~

Steve simmers, and he researches, and he can’t think of a way to get any proof more solid than a string of coincidences that would get him laughed out of any HR meeting or higher-up’s office. And that was even before taking into account that it is likely someone higher up is responsible for this; Steve doesn’t want to think about how far upstream this self-serving subterfuge runs.

The simulation feels ghoulish now, like something rotting, awful to touch. The gamified elements have morphed into something grotesque: the slideshow of pictures on the sign-in page, pressing a play button to start. Steve hates it a little more every time he signs in.

Inside the simulation, though - inside the simulation there are a bank of missions marked less urgent, and one of them is a landscape that he recognises. Of course it is, in retrospect; Washington is something of a hub, with enough government agencies that almost anyone could think of a few things they’d want to happen in it. This particular mission is reconnaissance, surveillance of unspecified suspicious after-hours activity at a small corner shop that’s only a few blocks away from Steve’s building. 

The vantage point that Steve recommends is on a tall-ish building without much of an edge and no taller buildings within two blocks. The fact that Steve’s building is on the third block, that his sixth-floor view will be able to see a silhouette on that roof is - incidental. Or so he can say.

~*~

Weeks pass in a vague haze of anxiety. Steve takes to keeping his curtains open and his laptop on the news, scouring through them for any more proof he can find. He thinks - he's fairly sure - that one of the more urgent missions he’d programmed a few days ago is carried out, the examination of a safety deposit box that only makes the news because a security guard is found dead at the end of the corridor. Steve feels nauseous, hearing about it. _That's me_ , he wants to say to anyone that will listen, to half the people who won't. _It's my fault as surely as if I'd done it myself._

One other person in his office had been tapped after strategy week, too; Monica sits four desks over from him and tells him willingly enough that the Mercenary Simulation is really interesting and thought-provoking, which could mean anything. She’d signed the same NDAs as he had, though, and clams up after that. He wonders whether any of the news stories he hears about is her work. He wonders whether he should tell her about the Soldier.

He keeps his mouth shut, but he can't help wondering at what cost; what kind of chaos their programming will wreak before he gets a chance to figure out what’s happening. Surely it's only a matter of time before someone decides it is worth doing even a low-priority mission. He just has to wait it out - but fuck, that feels like a tall order. Sometimes he swears that he's going to crawl out of his own skin, waiting.

And then a silhouette appears on a rooftop three blocks away.

Steve stares, and stares some more. The shadow leans down to take up a sniper’s position.

It's a strange feeling, to be vindicated in something that he’d wished wasn’t true, and Steve’s heart feels heavy and unhappy in his chest. He’d almost hoped that SHIELD and their relentlessly secretive culture was getting to him, but this - this seems like pretty incontrovertible evidence, in Steve’s opinion. Quietly, slowly, as though the man is three feet away instead of three blocks, Steve pulls his phone out, tries to take a picture. Fails, because his hands are shaking and the skyline is too generic and his camera quality is shitty. It’s not proof in the slightest, but he’s not going insane.

Suddenly the figure swings around abruptly; Steve scrambles sideways and out of sight, a sudden shock of adrenaline bursting through him, his heart pounding so hard he’s afraid it’s going to give out. Logically he knows perfectly well that the man couldn't see him, would certainly never be able to tell what Steve was doing - and yet he has the strange, terrifying feeling that the man has done exactly both of those things. He takes a deep breath and presses himself against the wall, eyes closed. It takes longer than it should to get his breathing under control.

When he gathers up the courage to approach the window again, to peer out of it, the sky is dark enough that it is impossible to tell whether there's anyone there at all. Steve would almost think it had been a hallucination, except for the fact that it was not, and neither was the string of events he’d been the one to work around.

At least, he's almost certain. He glances down at his phone screen again, and his heart settles a little.

~*~

The figure appears on the roof again the next night, movements precise and economical as they hoist themselves over the edge and settle once again into a sniper's posture, flat against the rooftop. There is a glint in the evening sun, silvery and hard, and Steve shivers at the thought of being watched through a rifle scope.

It feels like an eternity that Steve just looks out his window, but it’s probably only a few minutes. Once they're settled, the figure doesn't move until evening has settled in again and it is impossible to see whether they're still there. Steve sleeps badly, imagining a figure on a rooftop and the silver-danger glint of a gun trained on him.

When he wakes up he can't say he's sure that he's slept at all. He's groggy and on edge all morning - even Doug, who sits next to him and is without a doubt the most emotionally dense person in the office and possibly within the entire SHIELD complex, asks whether he'd woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

“No,” Steve says crabbily, completely undermining himself. “I just didn't get enough coffee.”

He spends half the afternoon looking over the NDAs that he'd signed and fuming at how neatly they box him in. So, come his lunch break, he's tired and grumpy and outright angry, and it is this dangerous mixture of emotions which he blames on what happens next.

And what happens next is this: he pulls up that low-priority mission from weeks ago, re-labels his apartment as the optimal vantage point, and designates its occupant as Status: Ally.

There's a certain visceral thrill to hitting the save button. It lasts through the rest of the afternoon, but as soon as he gets back to his apartment he wants to turn right back around and leave again. Now that it’s due to actually happen in a few hours, summoning the person acting out his ideas feels monumentally stupid.

Evening comes and goes, and there is no movement - not on the rooftop three blocks away, and not in Steve’s apartment, either. He shovels dinner down without tasting it and performs his nightly ablutions quickly, perfunctorily. Everything feels like _waiting_ , the atmosphere thick and heavy and hanging in the air like fog.

Perhaps new orders take some time to compute, he tries to rationalise. Or perhaps he’d just been too late, and the mysterious person had been pulled off this mission to attend to one of a higher priority. The moon arches past his window, and even the street outside seems dully, suffocatingly still.

He’s anxiously brushing his teeth for the third time when he hears it: the unmistakable _click_ of a lock being picked, and skilfully at that. He freezes, and then rushes to peer out of the door.

There’s a man in his living room, in full tac gear and carrying a rifle case - among, no doubt, a plethora of other weapons. His back is turned to Steve as he surveys the view from the living room window and, apparently, finds it acceptable, because he begins setting up his rifle with movements that are so exceptionally quick and precise that Steve thinks he could recognise this person through them; or, at least, he can recognise this person.

Once he’s set up the man turns to look at Steve. He’s wearing a mask on the lower half of his face, and dark goggles hang from his belt; it would be far too difficult to see if he had them on, and Steve gives thanks for small mercies. He has half an identity now, almost; the man’s eyes, over his mask, are very blue and very chillingly blank. He doesn’t say a word.

Neither does Steve; as soon as he thinks to try he is reminded that he’s in danger of swallowing toothpaste. He feels heat rise to his cheeks, and whirls around to wash his mouth out.

The man is still there when he re-emerges, watching him with that strange blank gaze.

“Hello,” Steve tries lamely, because it’s all he can think to say. The doorknob presses into the small of his back, but he’s not sure he can step forward. The man frowns and does not respond. Silence stretches between them, awkward and strange.

Finally, he asks, “Were you expecting me?” His voice is muffled by the mask, but even through the thick material Steve can hear that it’s hoarse and rough, as though it hasn’t been used for a long time.

“I - yes,” Steve says, probably not very convincingly. “Definitely.”

The man frowns further and returns to setting up his position; his movements now are slower but no less precise.

“I only thought, uh - do I get a name?” Steve asks. “Can you take the mask off?”

It is a transparently flimsy attempt to find out his identity, and the man’s expression changes into something like amusement - at least, from what Steve can tell. His eyes sort of crinkle, and Steve imagines that he’s smiling. “For a Status: Ally, you know very little,” he says. “No names, no identification.”

“Well, I’m Steve,” Steve says stubbornly. “And I’m not wearing a mask. Isn’t turnabout fair play among allies?”

“No,” the man says, and shifts uncomfortably. “You shouldn’t have told me that. Your handlers may punish you.” This time it’s Steve’s turn to frown, and the man leans forward, his voice going almost urgent. “I won’t tell them. But you shouldn’t have told me that.”

“My handlers?” Steve asks dumbly. And then, “Wait, why would they punish me?”

“For endangering your identity,” the man says, as though Steve is stupid. When Steve looks up at him, there is concern in those expressive eyes, the kind of emotion that Steve would not expect to find in an assassin. “Are you new?”

“You could say that.” The other man leans forward even further at that, his eyes bright and earnest over his mask.

“Listen to me. Sub-optimal performance cannot be tolerated. I have a spare mask in my bag, if you want it.”

“What kind of punishment -?” Steve starts, and then narrows his eyes. “Would you be punished for giving away your spare mask?” The man’s hesitation tells him everything he needs to know. “I won’t tell your handlers, either,” Steve says, a clumsy attempt at reassurance. “But could you tell me - what punishment would you get?”

“Unknown,” the man says, a little stiffly, withdrawing back into himself. “Depends on whether it is determined to be a minor infraction or a major one; likely it will be a minor one.” He catches Steve’s curious glance and continues, though the words start to come slower and more reluctantly. “Physical punishment is for minor infractions.”

“Physical punishment? Over a mask?” Steve asks. The man shifts again and shrugs, his movements stiff and unpracticed. “That’s - over a _mask_ \- that’s ridiculous!”

“The mask protects,” the man says, and frowns at Steve again over the sharp black edge of the mask in question. “For a Status: Ally, you know very little.”

“What about for major infractions?” Steve asks. The man shakes his head, retreats further into himself.

Steve doesn’t push; perhaps this is why the man offers more information. He’s resettled by the window, an eye to his scope, when he finally says, “The Chair is for major infractions.”

“What’s the chair?” Steve asks. Another pause goes by, long and silent. It would be the work of a moment for him to swing around and shoot Steve for being so inquisitive, but somehow Steve is sure that he won’t.

“It hurts,” the man says, and that is all he offers. That is all Steve feels comfortable asking, so he settles silently on the floor and watches the man for a very long time. He doesn’t move from his position by the window, and so neither does Steve. It is exactly three minutes past midnight when he packs up and leaves, without another word having been spoken between them.

“Wait, I -” Steve starts, jumping up. “I thought - I wanted to tell you I meant it. About not telling anyone your offer. You shouldn’t get in trouble for it.”

“And the same to you,” the man says solicitously, and though his tone is calm his shoulders seem to drop a little with relief.

“I just wanted to ask - you don’t have to give me your real name, if you don’t want to,” Steve says. “But I do want to call you something besides _that guy_ in my head.”

The man frowns, as though the concept is unfamiliar to him. “Why?”

Why? Steve gapes for a moment. “Because - because names are important,” he says helplessly, finally. “It feels strange not to call you one.”

“I can’t tell you my name,” the man says finally. Steve’s heart dips with disappointment. He opens his mouth to insist, or at least to press again, but then thinks better of it.

“Would you be - punished?” he asks carefully.

“Yes,” the man says. Hesitates; his shoulder pause in a breath, and then resume their steady sniper’s rhythm. “But that’s not why.”

“Why, then?”

“I don’t have one. Or if I do,” he amends, at Steve’s incredulous stare, “I don’t know it.”

“Make one up, then,” Steve says. It is not what the man expects; his gaze goes surprised and then contemplating, looking past Steve. His jaw works around names that he doesn’t say.

“James,” he says finally, and there’s the slightest wrinkling around his eyes that makes Steve want to beam.

“James,” he repeats, around a smile which is hopefully somewhat controlled, and sticks out a hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Will you come back tomorrow?” James hesitates, and then nods curtly.

“If the mission is not abandoned between now and then.”

“What happens if it is?”

“I return to base and am reconditioned,” James says. The word _reconditioned_ seems uniquely menacing when it is applied to a person, and though Steve doesn’t know what this procedure entails he is quite sure it’s not good. He doesn’t know what his face is doing but it must be terribly concerning, because James makes an aborted movement forwards. “It is standard operating procedure,” he says, as though this is meant to be reassuring. “I will attempt to avoid recalibration. And to return tomorrow.” Steve doesn’t know how to reply to that; James looks at him for another long moment, and then leaves.

Steve blows out all his breath at once, or so the burn in his lungs would have him believe, and slumps against the nearest wall that is there to hold him. He doesn’t know how to _begin_ thinking about what’s just happened.

~*~

Just like that, his brain realigns: the focus of his day is on the night, on the coming visit from James. Steve can barely force himself to sit down at his desk, can’t bring himself to spend more time than is absoutely required of him in the simulation. The closer the clocks crawl towards evening, the more jittery and nervous he gets. He’s not sure that he does any work at all in the last hour of the day, and his evening is completely lost to anxiety - wondering whether James will return, what to ask him, what the information he’s already given might mean.

The relief that crashes through him when his lock is picked again is as indescribable as it is probably inappropriate. James smiles to see him, just a little, or Steve thinks he does - the corners of his eyes crinkle just a little, and even with the mask on it lights up his face.

“I like being a James,” he says, unexpectedly.

“You do?” Steve blinks; somehow this is not the note he’d expected to start the night on. Questions bubble up inside him, and in the face of James’s small, tentative happiness he squashes them down. James shrugs, almost shy under the force of Steve’s stare.

“It’s better than what they call me.”

“What do they call you?”

“The Asset,” James says. “The Soldier.”

Steve’s blood runs cold. “The Soldier,” he is vaguely aware of saying, though his lips are numb. James stares at him evaluatively for a few moments, and then turns to set up his rifle. Steve cannot think of another word to say, so he doesn’t. James turns a little, and Steve keeps his eyes on the floor. “Do you know - anyone called the Mercenary?”

“No,” James says.

Steve shivers. His mouth says, “The Soldier,” again, without his permission.

“Yes,” James says. His voice is quiet but sure when he says, “But from you I would prefer James.”

“Of course,” Steve says, his voice unable to manage anything more substantial than a whisper. Surely it is not a coincidence, that he had been tasked to program the Soldier simulation, and that now the man in front of him -

Another not-coincidence. James leaves quickly, that night, and Steve can’t stop thinking about him, about SHIELD, about the Soldier simulation.

~*~

“Why do you work with them?” he asks as soon as he sees James again, desperate and unexpected and utterly ruining the quiet moment that had been hanging between them. James’s face goes serious and his body seems to go even stiller, though a moment ago Steve would have said that was impossible, and for a moment they just look at each other, a gaze that Steve feels dragging heavy on his skin.

“I don’t know,” James says. “No - that’s not right. It’s all I know. I can’t not; there’s nothing else.”

“That’s not true,” Steve says. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“You don’t understand,” James says, grim. “There is _nothing else_. I don’t remember - the Chair -” He sits down, his hands over his face, pulling at his hair, and Steve is helpless in the face of his own desire to try, clumsily, to be comforting; he goes and stands next to James, puts a thin hand on his shoulder. “It is against standard operating procedure,” James says, before Steve has any thoughts worth voicing. “To tell you about - my orders. The Chair.”

“You don’t have to, if it’ll hurt you,” Steve says. “But nobody will hear anything you say from me. I swear it.”

James watches him for a few long seconds; for so long that Steve thinks that it is a tacit refusal to talk further, or even that he has forgotten the question entirely.

Finally, he shifts the muzzle of his rifle from the windowsill to the ground, leaning on it heavily. “My orders,” he says slowly, “are in my head.” Steve frowns and waits, silent, uncomprehending. “When I am removed from cryostasis, my mission plan is in my head. The mission brief only clarifies.”

Steve doesn’t understand. “I don’t understand,” he says helplessly. James looks at him with blank eyes.

“My orders are programmed. Don’t you see? They’re all I have.”

“But - your memories -” James is already shaking his head.

“When I am placed in the Chair I am wiped clean. Then there is new space for new orders. No memories.”

“Wiped clean?” Steve whispers. His heart quails in his chest to ask it, but he can’t not. “How?”

James touches both sides of his forehead. “Volts,” he says. “Electricity. And sometimes I am placed in cryostasis. Most of the time, both. Either way, the process wipes me.” He looks up at Steve, the set of his jaw demanding an answer for an answer. “Are you really a Status: Ally?”

“I’m your ally.” Steve says the words slowly, turning them over in his mouth, but they’re no less true for it. “Not your handlers. You.”

James nods. Breathes out. Even so, he looks so deeply tense that Steve can’t bring himself to ask more questions. He’s not sure he needs to - James’s mission plans are programmed into him. They’re the same plans that Steve works on, he’s sure of it. Steve still doesn’t understand; and then he does, or he thinks he does, in a burst of clarity that he immediately wishes he hadn’t gotten.

The thing is that it’s not possible. James shifts his position ever so slightly; his shoulders shift smoothly under his tac gear, and it’s _not possible_ that Steve could be programming another _human_.

It’s not possible, but it makes sense. The truth is so much worse than any worst-case scenario he could’ve come up with on his own. Perhaps his breathing changes, or something about the way he shifts signals that something is wrong, because James looks down and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Who - programs you?” Steve asks, his voice thready and weak under all the implications of this new information. James hesitates, and then shakes his head.

“Unknown,” he says. “I presume the orders come from my handlers.”

“Who do you work for?” he asks, desperate. James hesitates, and then he shakes his head, face set.

“I am willing to tell you about my own procedures,” he says. “But to tell you of theirs is -” He breaks off, shrugs.

“Let me guess,” Steve says bitterly. “Against standard operating procedure.” James watches him silently, sadly.

“It is not only against standard operating procedure,” he says, and his voice is so gentle. “It is dangerous information. It is better for you not to be in possession of it.”

“Why don’t you let me make that choice for myself, huh?” Steve asks, but it’s half-hearted before it’s even out of his mouth, and James is shaking his head.

“You don’t understand. It is information that has been killed for.” He hesitates again, or seems to - Steve can’t really tell, from behind, but there’s a hitch in his breathing and a soft noise. “I would like to not have to kill you.”

“Well,” Steve says, sitting down. “Thanks.” James shoots him a glance that is a little pleased and a little satisfied, clearly under the impression that he’s gotten Steve to let this go. Maybe it would be the safer thing to do, but Steve can’t let himself take shelter when there’s someone in the rain. Not yet. “What are you watching for?” Steve asks, and gestures out the window when James looks back at him.

“For a Status: Ally you know very little,” he murmurs again. “I am watching for dead drops. There is one in the vicinity of the café, and the messages are of interest. Level: medium. The people leaving them are also of interest. Level: low.”

“I see,” Steve mutters. That information hadn’t been in the simulation when he’d programmed the mission. All he’d been allowed to know what that the front of the café needed to be watched.

James leaves without a word, but he does venture over to where Steve is sitting and press down on his shoulder a little, in goodbye. His hand seems hard and unyielding under his glove. Steve barely manages to mumble out a goodbye before the door to the apartment is clicking quietly shut.

The floor is cold under Steve, but he doesn’t think he has the strength to get up. He thinks he should tell someone about this development, and he doesn’t think there’s a soul who’d believe him. God, he doesn’t believe himself, sitting on his apartment floor at thirty six minutes past one in the morning. Maybe he’s imagining the whole thing. He can’t decide whether that’d be better or worse than having it be real.

His thumb hovers over his contacts, flicking between Sharon and Sam. He should talk to someone, but the thing of it is that James had been absolutely right. The information that Steve has - the information that he _suspects_ he has - is information that some people will find worth killing for. That’s not the kind of thing that friends spread around to each other.

Of course, the moment he decides to pull away is the moment he accidentally presses down. He cancels the call to Sharon in a panic and hauls himself to bed, but it’s no use; he doesn’t sleep, exhausted and wide-awake and feeling like his brain is overheating.

~*~

Steve barely even registers that someone’s calling for him in the lobby the next morning, he’s that distracted. Sharon has to grab his wrist before he realises that she’s saying his name.

“What - what?” he asks, finally catching on. “Hey, Sharon.”

“Don’t hey Sharon me,” Sharon says, pulling him away from the crowd shuffling into the elevators. Her eyes rake over him, and he knows he looks like shit, but it’s Friday morning and everyone is just waiting for the weekend to come, which means he’s got a lot of company. “What’s the deal with calling me at -” She checks her phone, though Steve is almost certain the gesture is mostly unnecessary and all dramatic, “- half past one last night? _This morning_ , even. Are you - okay?”

“Not really!” Steve exclaims, and clamps down hard on a hysterical giggle that really wants to pop out of his mouth. He takes a breath through his nose instead. “Not really,” he repeats, a little more calmly, once he’s fairly sure he won’t dissolve as soon as he opens his mouth.

“You work through lunch to build up hours, right?” Sharon asks, and Steve nods. “Make today a half day. We can talk. You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Steve mutters, and then his brain goes back and computes the rest of what she’d said. “That’s nice of you, Sharon, but I can’t -”

“Can’t meet me or can’t talk about it?” she asks at once, shrewd.

“Can’t talk about it,” Steve admits.

“The NDA thing not sorted out?”

“Yeah,” Steve says on an exhale. “You could say that.”

Sharon gazes at him for a few moments, and then leans in. “We could keep it to ourselves,” she offers, quiet and uncharacteristic and kind. Usually she’s the one to follow instructions to the letter, the one who can be trusted to stay wholly focused on the mission. Steve is tempted, so tempted. Sharon says, “I hear the Reflective Pool is pretty nice around mid-afternoon.”

“You’re a gem, Sharon, but it’s okay.” She looks at him with frowning eyes, clearly disbelieving. “I can handle it. I’ve even got a bit of insider help,” he says, and hopes to hell that it’s the truth. Sharon relaxes at that, at least, but her eyes are still concerned as she follows Steve into the nearest elevator and presses the button for his floor and then hers.

“If you’re sure,” she says eventually, halfway up. “But Steve - if you do want to talk. You can.” Her delivery is awkward and uncomfortable and all the more sincere for it. Very aware that they’re in an elevator full of other people, Steve touches her wrist gently, tries to be as reassuring as he can about it.

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you, Sharon,” he says, and then it’s his floor and anything she might have wanted to say is lost in the sudden stir of people.

He sits down at his desk and knows at once that he won’t be able to work on the simulation - the _simulation_ , he thinks bitterly, that’s not a real simulation. He can’t face it. Not today. He’s meant to work on it every day, but - he can’t, today.

~*~

He can’t help but smile when James returns to him that evening. James smiles back, tentative.

Steve has searched all day for a tactful way to say what he wants, but he’s not sure there is one. In the end he chooses to break the comfortable silence between them in the bluntest way possible.

“James,” he says, once James has set up his rifle and settled into position. James hums, and doesn’t turn around. “Do you want to be working for - whoever you work for?”

James goes very still, and then he turns around very slowly. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing you don’t want to hear,” Steve says. James only continues to frown, and he softens, tries to show all the sincerity he feels, lets it leak through his pores. “I’m serious, James. What if I could get you away?”

James stares over his mask, and Steve is suddenly, painfully aware that he can count the number of times they’ve met on his fingers, for all that they feel stretched-out and longer than the few hours they really are, for all that he’s never seen the bottom half of James’s face. They have only met a few times, and whatever Steve doesn’t know about him, he has no doubt that James is a capable agent; if he gets spooked, if he decides to disappear, Steve would have an awful time trying to find him again. He’s not sure that he could.

“You don’t talk of them fondly,” Steve says, and really ought to be congratulated on his fucking restraint. “They do - the most awful things to you. Please believe me, even if you don’t - take the offer,” he says suddenly, desperately, going off script and unable to bring himself to care. “What they do to you is so, so wrong. Nobody should have to go through half of it.”

James watches him, and his eyes are a little softer, a little warmer. Or perhaps that is the light from outside, filtering through the window to halo him in gold. Perhaps it is entirely Steve’s imagination.

“Wiping is standard post-mission procedure,” he says, and though the words seem disconnected James’s tone is contemplative. Steve holds his breath; James’s eyes find his, unerringly, and Steve is reminded once again of how very blue those eyes are. That’s not a trick of the light. “It would be - sub-optimal,” he says carefully, rolling the word around in his mouth, “to lose the current set of memories. My current set of memories.”

Steve takes a breath and forgets to let it out again. He swears James’s gaze sharpens at the soft noise of it.

“So,” he says, when James doesn’t say anything further. “You’ll think about it?”

James nods slowly. “I’ll think about it,” he repeats. Steve nods, tries to be relieved. He can’t help but fully intend to get James out; he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t, but he very much wants James to be in on it. He deserves that much, after all that his mystery organisation - all that _Steve_ \- has put him through.

“When do you report back to base?” he asks, fearing the answer as much as he wants it.

“When the mission or missions are complete,” James says. Steve’s heart twists.

“When do you think this mission will be complete?”

James regards him with cool eyes. “Unknown.” Steve forces himself to nod, to take it. And if James stops coming, he’ll do it himself.

~*~

He’s waiting for James’s go-ahead, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be productive in the meantime. Which is to say that, in his more petty moments, Steve spends his free time drafting the bones of a few viruses that’d be extremely destructive for SHIELD’s information-keeping ability. He won’t _use_ them, but he does feel better after having written them down and contemplating in graphic detail how nice it would be for databases to implode on themselves, or for relevant SHIELD information to be leaked on the internet, the perpetrators of James’s abuse named and shamed as messily as possible, their further abuses - if indeed there are more, as Steve suspects - lingering on them like a brand.

Far more critically, though, he’s working on something to get James un-programmed.

“What would happen if your mental orders conflicted with your mission briefing?” he asks, fingers crossed behind his back.

The question gets Steve a vaguely suspicious look, but it also gets him an answer. “Unknown,” James says. “It has never occurred before.”

“Would it hurt you?”

“It may.”

“Too many things are unknown,” Steve mutters. James just keeps looking at him, and it’s almost a relief when he turns away and that heavy contemplative stare is redirected to the street below.

It’s impossible to try anything fancy without knowing what’s going on in James’s head, but Steve thinks he can be fairly confident in programming a blanket _stop following (programmed) (outside) (hostile) orders_ into the simulation, and then telling it to self-destruct. The real task is to make this order look so much like any other that nobody will pick it out at a glance - or even, ideally, with a second look.

So: he has nearly everything ready when James turns to him, nervousness crawling through his tense shoulders, and says, “Did you mean it?”

Steve doesn’t have to ask what James is referring to, not with the way that his muscles are tight, his face serious and unhappy, the way he avoids Steve’s gaze. “Yeah,” he says, as gently as he can. It still makes James flinch. “I meant it.”

James is silent for a few moments, and then he says, “I have to report to base.”

It feels like someone has shoved a steel rod down Steve’s back. “When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow, then. I can - James, please -”

James frowns, and for a moment Steve’s heart plummets. “Isn’t that what I should be saying to you?” he asks quietly. Steve blinks at him, and for some reason it wins him one of those small eye-crinkles that means James is smiling. “Can you do it safely?”

“I swear, none of them will get their hands on you -”

“You idiot,” James says, and it’s - fond? It’s unmistakeably fond. The warmth in his tone bowls Steve over a little, for a second. “I meant safe for you. I can take care of myself.”

“You don’t have to, though.”

“No,” James agrees, and when he catches and holds Steve’s gaze his eyes are electric. “And neither do you.”

Steve looks and looks and looks at him, and wishes that he wasn’t wearing a mask. “All right,” he says, through his own surprise, because there’s not much else he can say. “Yes. I’m going to do it anonymously.” James leans back and smiles, or at least it seems like he does; the corners of his eyes crinkle again.

“Can you take the mask off?” he asks impulsively. James blinks, and the smiling-crinkles intensify.

“Can I, or will I?”

“ _Could_ you, then, you jerk,” Steve grumbles. “Are we in grade school or something?”

“No,” James says, and the half of his face which Steve can see goes serious for a second before breaking. “I thought it might serve as good motivation. Once you complete your mission and get to safety.”

Steve gapes a little, he can’t deny it. There are a lot of layers wrapped up in the answer, but chief among them is the fact that he’s wrangled it into a joke. A little of the self-satisfied happiness on James’s face fades, and Steve snaps back to reality.

“I dunno about motivation,” he says, and throws the nearest small soft object - in this case, a stress ball wedged into the corner of the room - at James, purposefully missing. James throws it back and nails him in the forehead, which seems unfair, but it brings another eye-smile to his face, so Steve can’t complain. “Discouragement, sure. Better be careful who you negotiate with.”

“Ha,” James says, so flat that for a second Steve is worried. “Someone thinks he’s funny.”

“Someone _knows_ he’s funny, and it ain’t you, pal,” Steve says smartly, and scrambles out of reach before James decides to use their respective heights and weights to his advantage. James scowls at him, and Steve is pretty sure that it’s joking.


	2. Chapter 2

The jokes keep Steve occupied for about thirty seconds after James has gone, as he imagines they were meant to, and then his mind crawls right back into its cesspit of worrying. The thing is that none of it can technically be proven wrong - Steve knows so very little about the situation that almost anything could go wrong. Not his coding: that’s solid and he knows it. But maybe someone will catch the line he’s agonised over and re-drafted a thousand times, or maybe the simulation has some sort of self-protective measures that’ll stop the orders from going through. Maybe _tomorrow night_ will be changed at the last minute to _tomorrow morning_ , and Steve will lose his chance. He should have told James not to go back to them. Fuck, he should have told James so many things.

Predictably, he sleeps badly that night and barely makes it through his morning alive. Even some of his colleagues begin to shoot him worried looks when they think he can’t see them, which means he must look really, really shitty. 

The worst thing is that the results aren’t immediate. He suffers a brief bout of uncertainty around 10.06 and spends a precious half hour reviewing his code for the thousandth time; unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find anything to change. He hadn’t on the fiftieth check and he isn’t going to now. Finally, after wrangling the internal servers so that this looks like it’s coming from a guest account a few floors up - which shouldn’t technically be possible on a classified simulation, and will definitely raise some red flags as soon as someone notices, but it’s better than giving himself away by using his own goddamn account - he inputs the code and hits save at 10.49. The program doesn’t immediately shut down; he is not immediately arrested. He counts both of those things as good signs, albeit small ones.

He even manages to make it to the end of the workday without being arrested; that is a bigger good sign. He hustles out of SHIELD headquarters like someone has lit a fire under him, and he’s not sure that he’d call that entirely inaccurate.

James makes it back to his flat that night: that is the biggest good sign of all, and the sight of him has Steve slumping so hard that he can’t immediately pull himself up.

When he does, though, at second glance, it’s not hard to observe that James is later than usual, slower than usual, looking to be in more pain that usual; he has his hands at his temple, and is missing the rifle case that is always on his back.

“Hey, James,” Steve says tentatively.

“I have a headache,” James says, instead of a greeting.

“Do you know - I mean, can you tell why?” Steve asks, and James shoots him a suspicious look even through the headache that has him clutching his forehead.

“My orders...conflict,” he admits finally. “Mission statement and -”

“And?”

“And the orders in my head,” James admits, the words sounding dragged out of him.

“Which one is more important?” Steve asks. James frowns.

“Anomalous situation,” he says finally. “I would imagine...the latter.” Steve exhales, but James doesn’t seem to notice. “The mission statement is supplementary information. Primary orders are programmed.” He nods once, decisively. Steve relaxes against the wall, and James eyes him again. “Was that your plan?”

Steve nods. “I don’t know how temporary it is,” he cautions. “I told the program to self-destruct, but I don’t know - if they have another way into your head, or -”

“I think I can build up a resistance,” James says. “I’ve felt - better. Since talking to you. Better able to - to rationalise my orders. I don’t remember much, still, but I also don’t obey so blindly. I know - more, now.”

“That’s good, James,” Steve says, and means every word of it. “That’s real - that’s really good.”

“It’s a good thing I was ordered to come here, is what’s good,” James says, and that feels like a punch to the gut.

Steve should tell him. He should tell James the role that he’s played in programming him, in torturing him, in taking away his free will. He wants to; except when his mouth opens it says, “I do know some things, you know.”

James eyes him, but relaxes slightly. “Status: Ally,” he confirms, and goes back to rubbing his head. Steve watches, guilt pooling in his chest, until finally he can’t stand it and jumps to his feet.

“Tea?” he asks, and doesn’t wait for an answer before putting the kettle on. “Tea. And - if you take that mask off we can get a cold towel on your head?” When he looks up from the counter James is looking at him, bemused. Steve flushes. “I think it’ll help?” he offers lamely.

James’s gaze turns inwards, and finally he nods tentatively. “That might be good.”

“That _will_ be good,” Steve says firmly, starting with the tea and getting out what Sharon insists is the good stuff. He thinks it’s okay - he’s a coffee person, frankly, and she’s the tea enthusiast, but he’s found that coffee doesn’t have much of an effect on headaches, so tea it is. Behind him, he hears the straps of the mask come loose, and the gentle noise that must be the result of placing it on a flat surface. He digs up a small, face-sized cloth while the water is boiling and soaks it.

When he turns around, James is touching the now bared lower half of his face tentatively. He’s even more remarkably striking with the mask off, is Steve’s first thought, and he immediately castigates himself for it. “Put that on your forehead,” he orders, folding it and passing it to James. James looks doubtful, but does what he is told without protest. Steve thinks he sees those broad shoulders relax a little; he doesn’t let himself dwell on it, shoves the now ready mug of tea at James with a, “Drink up. And sit down,” that belies exactly how tense he is. 

“Thank you,” James says, a little bemused as he finds himself whisked towards the sofa. He peers at Steve from beneath the wet towel with one very blue eye. Steve can’t hold his gaze.

“I’ll get some sheets for the couch,” he says. “You take the bed.”

James frowns, and opens his mouth. Steve glares him back into silence and takes the chance to nearly run out of the room. He takes a deep breath as soon as he gets a door between them, and his lungs only shake a little; he blames the asthma that he’d grown out of years ago.

Whatever the reason, he’s calmed himself sufficiently once he’s pumped the mattress up to haul it out into the living room and face James’s half-open, inquisitive eyes once again.

“That was your plan, right?” he asks tentatively, hand still on his forehead. “To reverse my -” He waves his hand up near his head.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, that was my plan. It wasn’t my plan to give you a headache, if that’s any comfort.”

Somehow, the next words out of James’s mouth are, “I don’t think I can stay here,” and it brings Steve up short, like someone has frozen the air in him.

“And why not?” he manages finally, and his voice doesn’t have half the indignation he’d like it to; he sounds almost desperate.

“My handlers,” James says. “They track me.”

“They _what_.”

“I’ve taken the trackers out,” James says, raising his head, eyes blazing. Steve feels nausea pulling at his throat; he doesn’t want to imagine what _taking them out_ entailed. “I’ve hidden them. Far away, but -”

“But you came here for your mission,” Steve says, and James bows his head. “How many times?”

“Just the once,” he says, his voice low and sad. “I wanted to keep you safe. But even once is enough for them to check. And you can plead innocence, except if I’m here -” He trails off evocatively, and Steve wants to close his eyes and screech.

“Yeah,” he says. “I get it.” And he does, except - the last thing he wants is to let James out of his sight. “Look, just - can you stay here tonight? Tomorrow I’ll look for an empty safehouse you can hide in. But tonight -”

“Yeah,” James says, and Steve doesn’t think it’s his imagination that he relaxes into the couch a little more. “Yeah, that sounds good.” He twists his head, and to be able to see his whole face, his whole smile - it just about bowls Steve over. “Thank you, Steve.”

And despite the guilt still warm and unhappy in his stomach, Steve can’t do anything but smile back. “Don’t mention it.”

“What if I want to mention it?” James mutters.

“Um,” Steve says, and casts desperately around for another topic. “How’s your headache?”

James only accepts this sudden - and rather obvious - subject change with a slight glare, but eventually lets his eyes fall closed again. “Better.”

“Good,” Steve says. “Do you want food? Sleep?” He watches as James considers this, his eyelids shifting as he thinks.

“Sleep,” he decides finally.

“Let’s get you to bed, then,” Steve says, and steadfastly does not blush at the unintended implications of his words. “Do you want to get rid of -” He gestures at the tac gear, and James hesitates. “You don’t have to.”

“I - won’t, then,” James says, watching Steve like a hawk. Steve only smiles at him. James nods, finally, and allows Steve to help him across the room and into bed, though Steve is under no illusions about how much weight he allowed Steve to hold up. That was something they could talk about another time.

He makes an odd figure, sprawled out fully dressed - more than fully dressed - across Steve’s bed. He seems to dwarf the entire structure, his extremities threatening to dangle off every edge.

“Sweet dreams,” Steve says, and kicks himself at once - what kind of a thing is that to say? As he closes the door and finishes setting up the couch, though, he doesn’t manage to think of a better alternative; save, perhaps, for keeping his mouth shut, but it’s too late for that.

~*~

For a few short days, it seems like things are going to work out. James is quiet and vaguely considerate as a roommate; his worst qualities are that he castly prefers baths to showers, that he eats ravenously, that he suffers from near-frequent headaches as his mind struggles to recover lost memories, and that he feels a compulsive need to hoard Steve’s knives and occasionally leave them in unexpected places.

“James,” Steve says, after finding one in between his couch cushions for the third time in two days. “Didn’t we talk about sharp things in the couch?”

“I put a safety guard on it,” James mutters, a little sulky, and Steve realises that he has, in fact, taped the back of the phone book to the sharp end of the blade.

“Why is it _here_ , though?” Steve asks, and somehow _James_ is the one who looks affronted by this question.

“You’re an _idiot_ ,” he says clearly. “You need to protect yourself.”

“From who?” Steve tries, but James just clams up in the same way that he always does when his handlers come up. Steve sighs. “Alright. If I promise to - to, uh, carry this around with me, will you stop leaving knives everywhere?”

James considers this for a second, giving the decision far more serious contemplation than Steve thinks it deserves. Finally he says, “Fine,” in the most grudging tone Steve’s ever heard.

_Carrying it around_ does include into the bathroom and to bed, Steve discovers, which is particularly perilous while he continues to sleep on the couch. He doesn’t know why he’d expected anything different, though. James had only reluctantly taken all the Kevlar off, and it’s still hovering around next to doorways for convenient grab-and-go purposes. Steve can’t exactly blame him for being paranoid, but he does wish it wouldn’t extend to trying to force Steve to protect himself.

By the time Monday morning rolls around, Steve’s thoughts are mostly full of how to negotiate the knife thing with James, because he’s fairly sure that carrying a knife with the back of a phone book taped to it is not going to fly at SHIELD headquarters. There are two emails in his inbox when he finally gets around to checking it over breakfast: the first one is something spammy about an upcoming book sale, but the second one is from SHIELD, timestamped 4am.

His blood rushes in his ears as he taps to view it: it says is that there is no need to come to work today, and absolutely nothing else. Steve swears that his heartbeat goes a little irregular as he stares down at the words. His first thought is that he can’t believe they figured him out so quickly. His second is _why aren’t I being arrested right now?_ and the third is less of a coherent thought and more of an internal shriek that has him stumbling into his bedroom.

James is still on his bed, still sleeping. His face is taut and unhappy, and his body is utterly stiff, but he is definitely there; he has definitely not yet been stolen away by his handlers. Steve looks at him, and then down at his phone, which threatens to crack if he grips it any tighter. He doesn’t understand.

Sharon picks up on the first ring, sounding harried and unhappy. “You got the news, then?”

“What news?” Steve asks, tiptoeing back into the living area. “All I got was this cryptic email telling me not to bother coming into work today. I thought I was in deep shit.”

“We’re all in deep shit, Steve,” Sharon says.

“What?” Steve asks, alarmed, but Sharon must think he wants unnecessary clarification, because that’s what she provides.

“This is bad. This is really bad.”

“What’s bad?” Steve asks, a little loud with impatience. Sharon doesn’t shush him, just breathes unhappily through the phone line until Steve’s heart feels like it’s being pulled in on itself.

“It’s Fury,” she says. “He’s been killed.”

Steve gapes. “Nick Fury? Nicholas J Fury?” Sharon’s silence speaks for itself; it’s a stupid question, but he thinks he’s allowed a moment of stupidity in the face of news like this. “The -”

“The director of SHIELD, yes, what other fucking _Fury_ would I be talking about?”

“Well, forgive me for not immediately jumping to the conclusion that _someone killed the director of SHIELD_ ,” Steve hisses. He glares at the wall in front of him for a moment, trying to imagine it’s Sharon he’s glaring at, and then forces himself to close his eyes and take a breath. When he speaks again it’s - calmer. Or he thinks it is, at least. “Do you know who?”

“Officially, it was a car crash,” Sharon says. “Unofficially…” Steve feels a shiver crawl down his spine, and he folds his arms as he waits for her to continue. “Hill’s got us investigating,” is all she says, eventually. “No car crash could kill Fury, if only because his car was freakishly smart. It would’ve taken a small bomb to wreck that thing.”

The implications are stark. “And that’s why we’ve been told not to come to work?”

“Seems like it,” Sharon says. “Unless there’s another reason someone would want the organisation on lockdown.”

Steve hesitates a little too long, and his voice is a little too casual when he says, “What do you mean, another reason?”

“I’m just saying,” Sharon says, “that SHIELD has careful and extensive policies in the case of a sudden death.”

“The kind that make a few days of dealing with it unnecessary?” Her silence over the line is answer enough, and Steve scrubs one hand over his face. “Great. That’s just - that’s just great.”

“Steve?” Sharon asks, her concern palpable even over the phone.

“It’s - okay. My cousin came into town,” Steve says, and when Sharon tries to interrupt him, tries to point out that he doesn’t have a cousin, he continues as loud as he can, tries to make himself clear. “You got a place they can stay?”

For a moment there’s only silence through the phone line, and then Sharon’s voice is back, unexpectedly venomous. “ _Steve_. What did you _do_.”

“I’m not talking about it over the phone!”

“I’m coming over,” Sharon says, and the line goes dead before Steve can protest. He tries to call her again, but she doesn’t answer.

When he turns around, air whooshing out of his chest in a sigh, James is standing in the doorway, his eyes sharp on Steve.

“Hey, sorry if I woke you,” Steve tries, but this has no effect on James.

“The director of SHIELD is dead,” he says.

“What - did you hear that?” Steve asks incredulously.

“I have good hearing,” he says. His frown deepens, and his voice goes distant and strange. “Fury, Nicholas J. Status: Target. Level: High.” He doesn’t sound like he recognises the words; maybe that’s Steve’s bias.

“You have orders to kill him?” he asks.

“I _had_ ,” James says slowly, so absorbed in his own thoughts that he doesn’t seem to notice the way that Steve sags with relief. “Standing orders. I think they were neutralised.”

“Good,” Steve says - maybe a little too emphatically, but he can’t bring himself to care. “ _Good_.”

“Not necessarily,” James says neutrally. “He still died.”

“Well -”

“There’s something more to it.” Steve hesitates, and James’s gaze grows more piercing, somehow.

“Yeah,” Steve admits.

“About me?” His eyes narrow further. “Perhaps they thought he was the one who helped me escape. They must have - he was the highest-level threat to them. Who else could it have been?” James looks relieved as he spells it out, which - is understandable, if he’s right and they’ve misled his handers, but it still makes Steve feel nauseous. Like it’s his fault.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Something’s gone wrong. My friend’s going to come over, alright? She’s going to help us figure this out,” Steve says, and hopes that he’s right.

“Friend,” James says, distant again. Steve watches him anxiously; it hadn’t taken him long to find out that James can stay locked up in himself and unresponsive for hours, swirling in a morass of new-old-recovered flashes of his past.

“Yeah, her name’s Sharon. Uh, Status: Ally, I guess?”

“Status: Ally. Affirmative,” James says, dragging his gaze back to Steve, not meeting his eyes. “Will she help you?”

Steve blinks. “I was kinda hoping that she’d help you.”

“I can - leave,” James says, and scowls. “I mean, I should. If you want. It would be tactical.”

“I don’t want,” Steve says staunchly, and gets a scowl for it.

“I am risking you -”

“ _I’m_ risking me,” Steve snaps, and James’s face cycles through a strange mix of tenderness and exasperation. “I knew what I was getting into,” Steve says, gentler. James shakes his head again, but he doesn’t protest further; in fact, Steve thinks he sees one corner of his mouth nudge upwards.

“I hope your friend is better at helping you than me.”

“Oh, she’s going to be spitting mad when she finds out what I’ve done,” Steve says. And then, because it’s not a prospect he particularly wants to dwell on, he changes the subject. “Breakfast?”

James stares at him for a while, in a contemplative sort of way that seems meant to - and succeeds in - signalling that he knows exactly what Steve is trying to do. Then he relents with a terse, “Yes. Please,” and sits down in the nearest chair to watch Steve like a hawk and make disapproving noises every time Steve nearly cuts himself - which, naturally, happens more often when he’s under judgemental eyes.

If Sharon is coming over, Steve is going to have to explain everything to her anyway. He stays silent for about as long as it takes for the pan to heat up, trying to pretend that the hot, tight feeling in his chest is just the heat off the element.

“Before Sharon comes over,” he says - into his pan of frying eggs, because it’s just easier not to meet James’s eyes. “There’s something I should tell you.”

James doesn’t react, initially; when Steve turns around he makes a polite _hm?_ noise that doesn’t really help matters.

“It’s me,” Steve says, and as soon as the words are out of his mouth he wants to stuff them back in - he’s so bad at saying things straightforwardly, thinks himself in circles until all his words are too tangled up to express. The wall in front of him is kind of yellowed, and he stares absently at the spots on it. As much as he looks, he’s too distracted even to tell whether they make up a pattern. “I’m - I was programming you.” He can’t bring himself to turn around and see what James’s face looks like, even as the silence drags on - for minutes, probably, if that, but it feels like hours upon hours. The eggs crackle helpfully, but even that noise is not enough to cut the tension.

“You’re with them?” James asks finally, in a voice that is horribly, tellingly calm.

“No!” Steve half-yells, whipping around. James is tense and tight at the table, looking ready to run at a moment’s notice, looking at Steve with something horribly like betrayal in his eyes. “No, I’m not, I swear - they outsourced their work to me. I thought I was programming a simulation. And then -”

“And then it turned into real events.”

“Yes,” Steve says wretchedly. “I know - I know you barely have any reason to believe me -”

In the sudden silence James snorts, shrugs with one shoulder, cutting Steve off before he has to think of anything else to say; his thought process had begun and ended with _you probably won’t believe me_. “You barely have reason to believe me,” he parrots. “I guess we’re even.”

“No,” Steve says. “I don’t think so.” James just shakes his head, and reaches past him to take control of the frying pan, saving the eggs from a rubbery, overcooked fate.

“I believe you,” he says. “I won’t try to get away. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No,” Steve says. “I want - to apologise. For what I did to you.”

James’s mouth nudges upwards in what looks like half a smile. “So I see,” he says, low and a little amused, like he’s sharing an inside joke with someone. “I accept.”

“ _James_ ,” Steve says, unable to help the exasperation that leaks into his voice, unsure himself, even, why it matters so much. “That’s not - this is important!”

James’s face goes serious again. “I know,” he says. “Did you think I wouldn’t? I know. And I accept.” Steve shifts again, everything in him screeching out to keep arguing. James’s face softens a little as he sees the movement. “You knew what you were doing?”

“No, of course not -”

“So forget about it,” James says, like it’s really that easy. Like this hasn’t kept Steve awake at night, staring sightlessly at his ceiling and wondering why he got picked to get put on his project. He wants to protest, but James puts the pan back on the stovetop and pushes a plate towards him. “Are you hungry?” he asks, and the moment disappears.

The two of them have just scraped a pan of scrambled eggs clean, and James is looking around vaguely hopefully as though more might appear in front of him if he just wishes hard enough, when the door is shoved unceremoniously open. James tenses, and Steve doesn’t miss how his hand slides into a previously unseen opening at the knee of his pants, but to his credit he doesn’t pull out a knife; he just watches as Sharon bursts into the room and stares at the two of them, eyes narrowed.

“Should I go?” he asks solicitously, and Sharon snaps, “Yes,” at the same time Steve sighs, “No, don’t bother,” and turns to make a second cup of coffee, because he’s definitely going to need it. He can feel Sharon glaring daggers into his back.

“Is this your insider help?” she asks, looking James up and down; James reclines under her assessing gaze, remarkably unselfconscious.

“Yes,” Steve says. “Sharon, this is James. James, Sharon.” The two of them nod towards each other like cats who aren’t quite sure what to do with the intruder upon their territory.

“Well?” Sharon asks, puffing up once again as she turns back towards Steve. “What the hell did you do, you idiot?”

“That’s what I called him,” James says, looking and sounding far too pleased about the fact.

“It breaches the NDA to tell,” Steve sighs, and practically inhales his coffee to avoid Sharon’s probing eyes.

“But you want to.”

“I don’t know!” Steve manages, somehow, not to shout. “It’s not, like - it’s dangerous information! I would actively be making your life less safe by sharing it!”

“But you _want_ to share it,” Sharon says again.

“I don’t - I - if I could just be sure -” Steve trails off helplessly, words building up in his throat and choking him. Even though he is doing his best to focus wholeheartedly on his coffee, he sees Sharon narrow her gaze and lean back, folding her arms.

“Steve,” she says. “Listen to me: I want to hear it.”

“Are you just saying that because I’m turning into a nervous wreck and I have a strange man in my apartment,” Steve mutters, not quite a question because he’s a little afraid of the answer. Sharon has started walking around the apartment, looking around and under and behind everything. “I can’t even be sure that this has anything to do with SHIELD’s closure. Is my flat bugged?” He should be a little more outraged at the prospect, he thinks, but at the same time - an invasion of privacy is the least he can suffer through.

“No,” James says. Steve throws him a startled look, and he hunches in on himself a little.

“You checked?” he asks.

“Of course,” James says, and leaves it there. Steve looks at Sharon, who ignores them both in favour of feeling up his bookshelf.

“Not that I can see,” she admits finally. “And a possible lead is better than no lead at all, so spill.”

Steve should probably double-check that she’s sure, maybe get her to sleep on it, but he’s too desperate to take the - admittedly long - chance that she will rescind her offer. “The simulation they put me on,” he says, straightening and meeting her gaze. The bones in his back creak and resettle unhappily. “The Soldier simulation. It -”

He can’t say it. Still, even now, he can’t bring himself to say the words. Sharon’s brow accumulates wrinkles as the silence drags on with only the wind to fill it. “What?” she asks finally.

“Sharon, I think it’s real.”

She stares at him. “You’re joking,” she says flatly. Steve shakes his head so vigorously that the world spins - or perhaps that is only the overload of morning caffeine doing its work.

“I swear I’m not,” he says. “I would _love_ to be joking, _believe_ me -”

“Tell me,” Sharon commands, and he does. He tells her about the theft, the convoy, the camps; she looks at him sideways, concern growing in her posture. When he tells her about the figure on the rooftop, she stills. Her eyes go serious and her mouth flattens out.

At this point in the story he hesitates; she glares, and he gives up and tells her everything else that’s happened. She is, predictably, aghast by the end of it, and looks ready to throttle Steve with her bare hands.

“ _Steve_ ,” she says, in a very controlled voice that is a thousand times worse than a yell. “You _have_ him. In your _apartment_. No offence, James, but that is the _dumbest thing_ -”

“None taken,” says James, who has been sitting very still and very quiet throughout this explanation, his eyes never leaving Steve. “I also called him an idiot.”

“I designated myself Status: Ally,” Steve says weakly. Sharon glares. “It was the only way!”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Sharon snaps. “There are _so many other ways_!” 

“It worked, anyway,” Steve says, ineffectually. Sharon claws her hands down her face. “Sharon,” he says, to get her attention; she peeks at him over her fingertips, wariness in her eyes. Steve feels a reflection of that caution - it is one thing to breach his own contract, but another to possibly ask for her to do the same. “I know - I mean, so far it sounds simple. I make mission plans and it’s integrated into current missions. But -” He hesitates, very aware of two sets of eyes on him. “Can you - I mean, is it possible to - to program someone. A person,” he says flatly, and it’s not a question. She’s always been quick; her hands drop, her eyes widen again.

“So you think - that James. The soldier,” she says, just as much a statement as Steve’s had been. “You think he was being - what, programmed? By you?”

They both look at James, who shrugs unhelpfully.

“I don’t think,” Steve says carefully, “that he was doing all that of his own free will. You didn’t - you should’ve seen his eyes. They were so - and he was wearing a mask. He said he didn’t have a name, and that he’d been ordered to my apartment.”

“I don’t have memories,” James confirms, quiet. “I just have orders, and a mission brief.”

“Orders,” Sharon says thoughtfully. “From who?”

James goes quiet again, glancing uneasily at Steve; Sharon’s eyes catch on the two of them, her gaze flickering suspiciously. Finally, Steve says, “He won’t tell me.”

“What do you mean, he won't tell you? What does he mean, you won’t tell him?” Sharon demands; James’s shoulders hunch unhappily.

“I mean he won't tell me, Sharon, how much clearer do I have to be?” Sharon raises one unimpressed eyebrow, and Steve sighs apologetically. “Apparently it’s too dangerous,” he says, on a slightly resentful exhale. Unexpectedly, Sharon snorts out loud, the noise strange enough to make Steve frown at her.

“You two were just made to match,” she says, amusement still lingering around the corners of her mouth. Steve glares, opens his mouth to protest, but she beats him to it. “Sorry, who was it who didn’t tell me anything because he thought it’d put me in danger?”

Steve’s mouth hangs open for a second as he tries to find a retort. After a few moments, he shuts it. Sharon looks unbearably smug, and he scowls at her.

“James - James, listen,” Sharon says. “You don’t know me, you can’t care -”

“Yes, I do,” James says, bringing the room screeching to a halt again. Sharon stares at him, wide-eyed.

“You what?”

“Carter, Sharon A,” James says, his eyes going to somewhere far away. “Status: Threat. Upon sight, seek further instructions.” He refocuses, eyes flickering around the room. “I didn’t,” he adds, as though this was in question.

“I’m a threat?” Sharon asks, looking torn between horrified and flattered.

“Level: Medium,” James confirms. He casts a quick glance at Steve and then away, as though guilty of something. “I have several standing orders,” he says.

“Okay,” Sharon says slowly. “Well, seeing as we think they’re after you, and apparently my safety’s on the line, I really think you’d better tell us about your - orders. Mission briefs. Do you have handlers?” The question has James standing, pacing the room, checking the window for hostiles, eyes quick and confident as they sweep the terrain outside.

“They are called HYDRA,” he starts. Sharon’s face drains of all colour; Steve thinks she might faint. He thinks he might faint, if he thinks about this too hard; he recognises that name from history books. “I was meant to be their Fist. To - shape the century.” His expression grows increasingly pained; his hand goes up to his head again, and it shakes a little. Steve busies himself making coffee with hands that match James’s shake for shake, spilling a little over the counter; he wraps them around his mug and inhales his drink like it’s air and he’s drowning.

“Oh my God,” Sharon says faintly. “Oh my God. Steve, did you say - what program were you working on? What was the simulation called?” Her words slur into and trip over each other in her haste to get them out.

“It was just called the Soldier Simulation,” Steve says, and her incredulous stare has him tripping over further explanation. “I thought - because I had one soldier, straightforward -”

“No,” Sharon breathes. “No. James, could you - your left sleeve?”

Steve frowns and looks at it, wondering if there’s something on it; he’s just in time to see James roll it up and reveal metal. Sharon breathes in harshly beside him and chokes a little on her own overzealousness; she claps one hand to her mouth. Steve feels like he can’t move, looking at it, at the dangerous silver shine of it. Somehow, he realises dimly, James has kept himself in long sleeves, all this time. And he hadn’t thought anything of it.

“ _No_ ,” Sharon says again. “The simulation was named after you. Wasn’t it? You’re the Winter Soldier.”

Steve hasn’t the faintest clue of what she means, but the way that she says it, the awed-afraid understanding on her face and in her voice, makes it hard to take lightly. The way James hesitates and nods, slow and reluctant, seems worse.

“The Winter Soldier?” he asks, almost afraid of the answer. The more he looks at Sharon, the more afraid he grows.

“I was called that,” James says. “I was -” he tries, but just as abruptly as he’d started speaking he slips into Russian, says something indecipherable. His eyes are far away and blank again, and Steve wants to call to him.

“The Winter Soldier?” Steve repeats helplessly. It doesn’t sound like a _good_ thing to be called.

“He’s the best of the best,” Sharon says, and there’s an almost uncomfortable amount of admiration in her voice. “If you put a room of assassins together they couldn’t even agree on whether he exists - that’s how good he is.”

“No,” James says suddenly, unexpectedly; the words hit the room like a punch. “Not good. Not -” He doubles over, his head in his hands, and his voice trails off into a low, pained groan. Steve is at his side before anyone can blink, hovering, not touching through some Herculean effort.

“Are you okay? Do you need anything?” He casts around desperately, hands fluttering uselessly beside him “I can get a bowl, some water - there’s some tea there -”

“Yes,” James grits out. “Tea. Please.”

The kitchen is quiet except for the water boiling, steam bursting out of the kettle in big clouds that dissipate before they reach the ceiling. Then James says, “I killed people.”

It’s not a question that needs an answer, but Sharon still says, “Yeah.” James’s eyes swivel over to look at her.

“How many?”

Sharon hesitates, and eventually she tells him, “There are a whole lot credited to you. I think a lot of them aren’t true. I can’t tell you a number.”

James considers this wordlessly and then nods. “They would like that. It seems - characteristic.”

“ _Christ_ ,” Sharon murmurs, very emphatically. “HYDRA’s been controlling the Winter Soldier?” James drags himself upright, and though Steve shoots her a reproving look she either ignores it utterly or does not even notice, intent on James.

“As far as I can remember,” he says.

“How far is that?” James frowns towards Sharon, but not entirely at her.

“Two months,” he says finally. “I am wiped between each mission. Allegedly. It is standard procedure.”

Sharon stares at him. “Wiped,” she says, her eyes flicking towards Steve, clearly remembering what little he’d been able to tell her about it. “Can you tell me - more about that?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Steve says, and glares at Sharon again, unable to help his own protectiveness though even he can see the question is a valid one. She does notice it this time, and subsides somewhat sheepishly.

“No, I can,” James says. “Talk. I mean.”

So he talks - properly, finally - and what he says is awful. He talks about the missions he’s working, and Steve’s stomach curls as he recognises both of them. He talks about the words, the sentiments, that he’d been fed as soon as he’d woken up, and even hard-boiled Sharon, Sharon with her iron stomach, looks like she wants to retch at the blatant prejudice in them.

James had obeyed because he didn’t know anything else; in some cruel twist of fate, the only memories that the Chair had left behind was of the overwhelming pain that comes from being in it. Steve feels sick to his stomach, like every new revelation is a blow: one-two-uppercut, heavy and disorientating, and then he feels worse for making it about him. He wasn’t the one who’d lived through it; worse, he’d been one of the people _doing_ this. He’d been _complicit_.

Sharon’s face is the colour of whey even as she keeps pushing for more information. The more she asks the more James seems to hurt; when Sharon asks him to try and remember anything from further than two months ago he crumbles in on himself under the weight of everything he doesn’t remember, the flashes of what he does. He can’t tell either of them much, but his short, terse descriptions of the murky maybe-memories that have drifted up into his consciousness is enough.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Steve says, reaching out, unable to bear it, unable to keep watching. “It’s enough. You don’t have to -”

James grabs his hand, tight; the room goes still, as though everything has come to halt in that simple movement, that one moment. Steve is vaguely aware of Sharon watching them warily, but he only has eyes for James.

“You’re bleeding,” he says quietly, into the heavy silence that settles over the room. Steve doesn’t realise for a second that James is talking to him.

“What?”

“You’re bleeding,” James says again, gently, his fingers touching Steve’s clenched fists, loosening them. Looks like his nails are too long; he’s cut through the skin in three places, and red drips downwards slowly.

“Jesus, Steve,” Sharon says. Her voice is a little weaker than usual. “You need a Band-Aid?”

“No, no need,” Steve says, almost on autopilot. “They’ll just come off anyway.”

“You’re hurt,” James says, and Steve only just barely stops himself from saying something idiotic out loud, something like _it’s the least I deserve_.

“It’s fine,” he says instead. “Barely feel a thing.”

James frowns, but does not protest further. His touch is terribly gentle against Steve’s wounded skin; Steve’s stomach twists, hot new guilt roiling inside him, turning him inside out. Sharon takes another breath, and this one is audibly unsteady. Steve watches for her reaction, and when she rubs her face the dry scraping noise of her nails on skin make him shiver.

“Jesus Christ, Steve. The trouble you attract.”

“Yeah.” It’s all he can say.

“This is massive.”

“Yeah.”

“This is _awful_. If - well.” James laughs, and the sound is unhappy and grating.

“Yes,” he says, and Steve stays silent, his head bowed under the weight of all this new knowledge. “That sums it up well.” The silence stretches between them for a while more; Sharon watches the two of them, and finally he shoots her a crooked sort of smile. “It’s okay,” he says. “You can say it. If it’s true. Maybe I’m faking. I probably wouldn’t think I was telling the truth, either.”

Sharon shakes her head. “I have to consider it,” she admits. “And I should be reserving judgement. But - I don’t think you are.” She leans forward. “I’m glad,” she says finally, “that you escaped.”

James dips his head, takes a sip of his tea, though it must be cold by now. “Me too,” he says, quiet. “Though from what I understand, it wasn’t me doing most of the escaping. Steve did - something. To my programming.” He looks at Steve, and his eyes have softened. “I owe a lot to him.”

“No,” Steve says, far too harsh; he looks away, gentles his tone when James’s brow furrows. “If anything I must owe you.”

Sharon, thankfully, draws attention back to herself when she asks, “Do you have any idea where this - HYDRA - is operating out of? Anything?” James shakes his head, lips pursed unhappily; almost all of his knowledge is entirely subjective, things that have been told or done to him, which is unhelpful from a mission-focused point of view. He hadn’t even been able to confirm whether or not HYDRA was working out of SHIELD, though the fact of Steve’s assignment, the one that had started it all, seems to answer that question pretty clearly.

“Alright,” she says finally. “I’ll get - some checks going.”

“Call in all your favours,” Steve says, more pleading than he means to be. “They - they must be so good at covering their tracks.”

Sharon smiles, a sharp expression that looks like it could cut metal. “I’m going to be better.” With these fairly impressive last words, she heads for the door; Steve, being a good host and also having one more question for her, follows.

“Sharon,” he says lowly, before she can take off and do her secret agent thing, “do you have any spare safehouses in the area?”

The question makes her freeze, makes her look back at James; he is looking out of the window, but something about the way that he has angled himself - or perhaps just the fact that he’d apparently heard Steve’s phone conversation earlier - makes him feel positive that he is listening in.

“I don’t know,” Sharon says finally, drawing his attention back to her. “I mean,” she corrects at once, “I do know, but if HYDRA is operating out of SHIELD like your assignment suggests then they’d have to be pretty high up to have made it this far. And that means they’d know all of our safehouse locations, every single one.”

“Every single one,” Steve repeats. He only has the one flat. “Your place?”

“I live dangerously close to the Triskelion,” Sharon mutters. “And the whole building is SHIELD-subsidised, it’s crawling with agents. That seems -”

“Bad idea,” Steve agrees.

“Sam’s place?” she suggests tentatively.

“Oh, I don’t want -”

“He was in the army too,” Sharon says. “He was in some classified projects, even -”

“Yeah, and we still don’t know what they were, do we? Sam knows what _classified_ means,” Steve tries to snap in a whisper. It doesn’t work too well, but Sharon gets the message.

“Yeah, and this is going way past a matter of classification,” Sharon snaps. “He can _handle_ himself, was my point.” Steve glares, unable to quite bring himself to deny that to have Sam’s help would be a valuable thing; unable, also, to put him in danger by asking for it. Sharon glares back. “Look,” she says, “your options are _asking your very capable friend for help_ , which might be bad, or _letting a time bomb stay here_ , which is definitely worse.”

“I can leave,” James says from the window, proving Steve right; he had been listening to the conversation, somehow. The asshole. Steve narrows his eyes as James abandons any pretense of privacy and comes closer.

“What do you mean, leave?”

“I mean leave,” James says. “Go away. Lie low.”

“By yourself? No!” Steve says, at the same time that Sharon backs him up with a gratifying, “That seems unwise.” James looks between them, bemused.

“It’s the most efficient solution.”

“Most efficient in getting you caught, maybe,” Steve says.

“Maybe,” James agrees. “But it’d be me, not both of us. Not me and you and your friend. Just -”

“You’re not a just anything, pal,” Steve snaps. James blinks at him, infuriatingly nonplussed at this sentiment. “We’ll figure something out -”

“Sam says he’ll help,” Sharon reports. Steve whirls around, and she pre-emptively shows him her phone before he can start yelling: she’s texted _the nda thing that’s been making steve twitchy is getting uglier. its not strictly legal but can we talk to you about it. also can we use your place as a safehouse_ , to which Sam has replied _??? i guess so??? am i going to go to jail for this_.

Steve briefly commandeers Sharon’s phone to assure Sam that jail is a very real possibility, fending off her annoyed grabs at it with his elbows; after a small eternity of watching Sam type, a short response comes through: _you better come over_ , followed closely by _i made pancakes_.

_Are you SURE_ , Steve tries, and Sharon uses an underhanded grab to finally wrestle her phone back.

“He says _I better be sure, I’m eating them right now_ ,” she reports, looking down at her phone.

Steve scowls; his own phone buzzes, and it’s Sam telling him to cut the bullshit and hurry up, which makes him scowl harder.

“Good,” Sharon says, her voice uncomfortably close to his ear as she peers over his shoulder. “Give James a pair of sunglasses and go on over.”

“If we die, I’m blaming you,” Steve grumbles, but he does as Sharon says; James bundles all his weapons into his tac gear, in a heap which looks unreasonably small in his arms.

“I can give you a lift, you’re on my way,” Sharon says, even though the Triskelion is not really in the direction of Sam’s house.

They don’t run into anyone on the stairs, and nobody on the street takes any notice of the three of them awkwardly manoeuvering into Sharon’s car.

“James, get on the floor,” she says, and James packs his considerable bulk into the gap between seats, spreading his clothes over himself so it looks like Sharon is just extremely disorganised instead of a pseudo-smuggler.

“Can you breathe down there?” Steve asks, and gets a thumbs up and a pat on his hand that is probably meant to be reassuring.

When they get to Sam’s house Steve makes the mistake of hopping out of the car; Sharon promptly locks him out, and reaches between the seats to grab the bulletproof vest that’s covering James’s face.

“I know I said I believe you,” she says. “But, shockingly, I am capable of being wrong. If you’re lying, I will find out, and you’re going to be in a world of hurt.” Her voice is steely and quite audible, because civilian cars don’t come with built-in soundproofing. James meets her gaze calmly, as dignified as one can be in a pile of clothes on the floor of a car, and dips his head a little; Steve sighs and leans against the passenger door. “And,” she continues, “if you hurt Steve -”

“What? Hey!”

“If you hurt _either of my friends_ , you’re going to be in an entirely different world of hurt, and it won’t be any less painful -”

“Sharon!” Steve snaps, banging the window, feeling his face flushing and deeply regretting his premature exit from the car.

“I trust Sam to be a healthily detached adult,” Sharon says, ignoring him; James has the gall to look _amused_. “But Steve does things with his whole heart, and that includes helping you. I hope you’re not taking advantage of that.”

“ _Sharon Amelia Carter_ ,” Steve barks.

“I understand,” James says, remarkably calmly given his situation. Sharon nods brusquely and unlocks the car. As Bucky begins to extricate himself from the pile of clothes Steve whirls around and marches up to ring Sam’s doorbell. He’s so red that even the tips of his ears feel hot; that feeling doesn’t abate in the slightest as Sharon and James come to stand behind him. Sam’s eyebrows raise as soon as he opens the door, but because he’s a good friend he doesn’t say anything, just stands aside to let them in.

“Do I want to know what’s going on?” he asks, eyes flicking between the three of them. Steve and Sharon sit down, but James draws all the blinds in the living room and then just stands where he is, apparently oblivious to Sam’s continually rising eyebrows.

“Uh,” Steve says, and decides to start at the basics. “This is James. He’s -”

“A fugitive,” Sharon finishes, when Steve can’t find the words.

Sam’s mouth says, “Hi, James,” but his tone says, quite fairly, _what the fuck_? “Doesn’t SHIELD have safehouses for this? No offence, man,” he adds in James’s direction. James shrugs.

“SHIELD is torturing him,” Steve blurts out, illogical. He feels like his entire brain is warping, like the entire concept of a coherent explanation is beyond him. And Sharon’s little - display, out in the car, hadn’t really helped much.

“Steve, you’re cracking up,” Sharon says bluntly. “I’ll explain if you make some tea.”

“God, please make tea,” Sam says. “Sharon gave me this whole damn box and I’ve barely made a dent.”

“I’d resent that if I could explain anything for myself,” Steve says, and flees into Sam’s kitchen where, at least, he knows what he’s doing. Out of the corner of his eye he sees James move into the doorway, watching him like a protective shadow. In the living room, Sharon explains the situation far more clearly and succinctly than he could ever manage: Steve’s programming had been applied multiple times to the real world, he’d found the man doing it, and by all appearances it looked like the man - like _James_ \- was being coerced with the help of some thoroughly illegal procedures. Sam’s eyes are wide by the time she catches up to herself, even after this rather minimalist explanation, and Steve has barely set down their tea.

“Christ,” Sam says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “What a mess.”

“We don’t know for _sure_ sure that SHIELD has anything to do with it, really,” Sharon admits, and is the only one of them to pick up her cup, drinking greedily. “That is, we don’t have proof. Just coincidence and conjecture. But given that Steve’s simulation came from inside -”

“Sure. You don’t want to take chances, I get it,” Sam says. “I hope you’re alright with the couch, James.”

“I am capable of sleeping on a couch,” James confirms.

“I think this is the start of a wonderful friendship,” Sam returns. James frowns at him.

“Casablanca,” he mutters. “That’s from - a film.”

“Hey, that’s right. You seen it?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.” James is frowning again in the way that means he has a headache, his shoulders gone tense and tight. Steve dares to reach out and touch them, gently; James relaxes, which is a good thing, and looks back at Steve, which might not be. His eyes are soft again

“Throw in a yes and you’ll cover all your bases,” Sam says. His voice is dry, but his eyes dart between Steve and James; Sharon rolls her eyes, like her speech in the car has just been validated, and Steve glares at the pair of them.

“As touching as this is, I’m off,” Sharon says. “Steve, care for a lift?”

That, somehow, has James swivelling to look at him. “You’re leaving?” he asks, and he sounds unreasonably like it’s a betrayal.

“It’s safer to separate,” Steve says, feeling a strange urge to justify himself in the face of James’s unhappy mouth, the solemn downwards bow of his lips. Abruptly, his fingers twitch for his pencils; he’d stopped drawing after picking up the SHIELD job, telling himself he didn’t have the time for it. He doesn’t know what it says about himself that it’s - James, who brings back the itch for it. “I can stay in touch - I’ll text Sam. All right?”

James watches him with careful eyes, and Steve can barely keep himself from shifting uncomfortably. Finally, he relents and nods.

“Once every three hours,” he says. “If you don’t check in -” His jaw flexes as he cuts himself off.

“Then what?” Steve asks, genuinely curious.

James sets his jaw. “Then I’ll go out and look for you.”

It’s not the answer that Steve’s expecting, and it makes him take a second look at James - at the set of his jaw, the determined light in his eyes. He wonders, in a slow dawning horrific kind of way, how loyal James feels towards him; how far gratitude could be taken, could affect someone’s attitude, in this kind of situation. Steve doesn’t think it’s an overstatement to say that he has, at the least, saved James a truly excruciating amount of pain.

Suddenly he feels sick to his stomach; he can barely meet James’s eyes. “Talk to you later, then,” he says instead of goodbye, and practically flees the room - away from James’s intense, piercing gaze, away from what it might mean.


	3. Chapter 3

His apartment feels strangely large when he gets back to it and finds it empty - finds it as it should be, he reminds himself, but it doesn’t feel natural anymore. He pushes the thought away; James is safer where he is, and that should be the end of it. He almost forgets to text Sam, and has to be reminded with a _he’s already getting kind of anxious for your check-in_ text - which, knowing how James had behaved around Steve’s flat when he wasn’t waiting anxiously, is probably a grand understatement on Sam’s part. Once he gets into the rhythm, though, it’s pretty easy to keep up, and he goes from single words to keysmashes to pictures of whatever happens to be in front of him over the rest of the day.

SHIELD is back up and running after only two days of downtime - Steve isn’t sure whether or not to be thankful, considering what someone has been using it for, but he can’t help but be grateful for the distraction of his work. He’s low enough on the SHIELD ladder that a change in directors barely makes a difference to his workload, and he throws himself into it so thoroughly that it’s lunch before he realises that one of the many emails in his inbox is telling him to take some time off from the Soldier simulation. When he looks, the program has disappeared from his taskbar; he can’t access it anywhere. It could be a sign that they suspect him, or they could be revoking everyone’s access while their titular Soldier has disappeared; there’s no way for him to tell. Monica isn’t acting as though there’s anything wrong, but it would be logical to keep other simulations going, so Steve can’t really use her as a metric, either. He takes a breath and tries to put it aside, to varying degrees of success. 

Not being arrested seems like a terribly low bar, but it’s one that Steve is pretty happy about passing - once again - at the end of the day. He’s less happy about the radio silence so far from Sharon; even though he knows full well that these things take time, that Sharon is fully capable of sending out feelers, that she’s doing this as fast as possible, he hates waiting, it’s as simple as that. He likes having something to do.

He steers clear of Sam’s house, not wanting to establish any observable increase in contact, but of course that means that he can’t see James, can’t see how he’s doing. Sam gets so fed up with his questions that he starts to send pictures of, as far as Steve can tell, places that James has just recently left a mark: the mussed cushions of his couch, knives scattered around on the counter, a scuff mark on the floor, all accompanied by griping commentary about James’s civility, or lack thereof. It’s a relief, it lightens the weight of his anxiety, but all the same he’d like to talk to James again.

The fact of the matter is that he can’t, though, not right now, and he’s just going to have to accept that. Perhaps it’s going to be better for both of them, in the long run.

James doesn’t have a phone, so he doesn’t tend to reply to Steve’s updates unless Steve has asked a direct question. By the end of the second day, however, Sam texts him that James had curled up on the ground for a straight hour muttering to himself, and by evening started to relay some of the flashbacks that he’d managed to coax out of James: the hijacking of a car, a string of code words. Nothing particularly helpful, but they’re starting to grow more coherent, at least.

On the fourth day of James’s absence, Steve gets back to his apartment to find everything - just a little out of place. Shuffled around, rifled through. It’s impossible to pinpoint anything that is completely different, but the overwhelming sense that someone has been through his things is impossible to ignore.

Steve oscillates over his own threshold for far too long, and in the end can’t even make up his own mind; he turns right back around and hovers anxiously in the foyer to call people for advice - his own phone, he rationalises, should be safe, because he keeps it in a pocket. Sharon is in favour of sweeping the room for bugs, even offering to come over and help. Sam is not in favour of it, arguing that it would raise suspicion. James is with Sharon in favour of it; in fact, he also offers to come over and help, and has to be reminded that his is the very presence the bugs are probably there to look for. He grumbles, and Steve hides a smile into his phone’s receiver like an idiot, helplessly fond.

“Come over tomorrow?” James asks. “I know you’ll text, but I still want to make sure you’re alive.”

Everything in Steve wants to say _yes, please, I want to, I will_. That’s exactly why he shouldn’t say any of those things. “I’ll try,” he prevaricates, and even through the staticky phone line he can hear the exhale of displeasure on the other end. He rushes through his goodbyes and hangs up, trying not to notice how James had grown noticeably more subdued after the lukewarm answer

This is not something he should be noticing. He sighs and heads back to his apartment.

~*~

Because he is supposedly a capable and competent SHIELD agent, he’d swept his apartment for bugs and found six; now the question was what to do with them. They’re lying on his desk, unharmed, because he’s not sure that a capable and competent SHIELD agent would necessarily destroy company property - perhaps he could report it to someone, or drop them off somewhere. In any case, there are six little presences on his desk that feel distinctly malevolent, and he’s been doing everything even more quietly than usual.

Sam is waiting for him when he comes out of the Triskelion, sandwiches in hand and a distinctly fed up expression on his face.

“Sam?” Steve asks tentatively. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, something’s wrong,” Sam mutters, shoving one of the several sandwiches he’s carrying at Steve. “Why didn’t you just agree to come over, huh?”

Steve blinks. “What?”

Sam manages, somehow, to sigh through his mouthful of food, extremely put-upon. “Your boyfriend refuses to let me be until I verify that you’re still alive and it’s not an enemy agent sending us texts that read exactly like they’re from you.”

“I’ve been - he’s not -”

“You should’ve just made plans to come over and save us all a lot of trouble,” Sam grumbles, ignoring the blush that has probably taken over the entirety of Steve’s face by now.

“I can’t!” Sam looks extremely sceptical, and Steve tries to calm down and rephrase, touching his cheeks with hot hands. “I mean. I shouldn’t. It’s not -”

“Not what, Rogers?” Sam asks. “The easy way to go about things? Fuck knows you like to take the unnecessarily hard road. Or do you not want to see him?” he asks suddenly, eyeballing Steve. “Is that it?”

“No!” If anything, Sam’s expression grows even more sceptical at the outburst, and Steve forces himself to subside. “Of course I want to see him, why would you -”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been flooding my schedule, have you? It’s been the better part of a week.”

“I know,” Steve mutters, shamefaced. “I know.”

Sam’s touch on his shoulder is unexpected, but not unwelcome. “Come on,” he says kindly. “Tell me about it.”

The continue to walk aimlessly, and he doesn’t push. That’s the most dangerous thing about Sam’s questions; he lets the answers ferment until Steve positively wants to talk to him.

“I just don’t know how I could face him,” he says finally. His voice comes out smaller than he’d intended, but there’s not much he can do about it now. “He’s so - and I’ve been forcing him to act how I wanted. Just - trampling all over his free fucking will.”

“I think,” Sam says, very measured, “you know exactly what I want to say to that.”

“I know,” Steve says on a tight exhale, because he does. “I just don’t think it makes much difference.” He feels tense all over, as though a breeze, a nudge, could shatter him to pieces. “I’m still the one who -” _programmed him_. He can’t say it. What kind of a coward does that make him? “I should’ve,” is all he can say, quiet, shoulders slumped. “I should’ve noticed sooner. I should have gotten him out sooner. I’ve been working on that thing for months.”

“You should’ve saved the whole damn world by now, I guess,” Sam says dryly. Steve sighs and rubs his eyes.

“Maybe.”

“Doesn’t he know this?” Sam asks. “It’s not like you shied away from explaining it. He knows you were the one behind programming him, right?”

“Yes, but -”

“But what?”

“I was expecting him to - realise what that meant, I guess,” Steve says. “As soon as he had some time to think, away from me.”

Sam sighs the most put-upon sigh that Steve has ever heard. “And instead he’s out here asking you to text a million times a day and inviting you over and sending me out here to make sure you’re alive. Does that seem like someone who’s thought better of himself and hates you?”

Steve groans and doesn’t answer. He’s not sure that there’s anything to say.

“I think you know what I want you to do,” Sam says, and Steve sighs, waving a hand through the air as though to negate the statement, like he can ward it off if he just flicks the right way.

“Talk to him,” he says dully, when Sam just keeps looking expectantly at him.

“Talk to him,” Sam repeats, infuriatingly agreeable. “I don’t think Sharon or I could say anything to help you. Not with this, at least.”

“It’s infuriating how right you are,” Steve mutters.

“And next time you can even pay me for it,” Sam says. “So you’re coming over for dinner tomorrow, right?”

“If you’ll have me,” Steve says, and gets a look which very distinctly tells him to fuck right off. “Fine. Yes. Thank you.”

“I’ll see you then,” Sam says, imparting a last brief half-hug before jogging away; abruptly, Steve’s stomach is a pit of gnawing nervousness which shows no signs of abating.

~*~

True to form, that nervousness only intensifies as dinner approaches; Steve is just about vibrating out of his own skin by the time he knocks on Sam’s door. As it opens - well, Steve won’t admit it to anyone, but James is the first thing he looks for, and he can feel a smile creep onto his face at the sight of him lurking surreptitiously in the corridor behind Sam.

“I brought wine,” he says, suddenly breathless, stepping inside and trying his best to pretend that James isn’t all he wants to look at.

“Thanks,” Sam says, though he makes a slight face as he looks at the label; he’s the wine guy, Steve is not, and Steve has always had apparently terrible taste, which seems like an unfair charge to level against someone who tries his best to pick the most attractive-looking label within a given price range. He had, admittedly, been told not to buy wine anymore, but it’d been on sale, and he’d felt like he had to bring _something_ this time. This time felt different. “I’ll go put this in the fridge.” Steve’s eyes flick nervously towards James, he can’t help it, and Sam rolls his eyes - first at Steve, for known reasons, and then at James, for reasons that must make sense between them, because James scowls and narrows his eyes. “You two talk to each other,” Sam orders, and then sweeps away, leaving the space between Steve and James tentative and empty. They have almost no choice but to face each other, and Steve only lets himself be a little gratified at the slight pinkness in James’s cheeks.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, stepping forward and stretching his hands outwards; he’s not quite sure what he wants to do with them, but he has to do something. James’s face is softer, a little more filled out - though this is probably the work of Steve’s imagination rather than any external factor, since it is difficult to imagine that a mere matter of days has had such a difference. His hair is swept softly away from his face and tied back. Even his metal arm looks shinier, somehow healthier.

Most importantly, he’s smiling. Smiling and safe and healthy. “You’re always saying the things I should be saying,” he teases, and wraps Steve up in a hug that is unexpected but no less welcome for it. “I’m glad to see you’re safe.”

“Me too, frankly,” Steve says. “I dumped the bugs back at the front desk this morning. Sharon said it’d be fine, and it didn’t seem like such an unusual thing to the people there, so.” He shrugs. James pulls away, gaze flicking down and away as he sobers.

“You think it had something to do with me?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admits. “When I asked Sharon she didn’t exactly say it’s not common practice - just that it’s not usually done to non-field agents. So it’s - you know, plausible.”

“But unlikely,” James says quietly, and Steve dips his head.

“But unlikely,” he repeats.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Steve says. “A few bugs is nothing to worry about, really -”

“But they won’t stop at a few bugs,” James says, and Steve can’t tell him it’s not true.

“They might. If I don’t give them anything to suspect, they might.”

“They might,” James repeats, but nothing about him seems particularly optimistic, from his voice right down to the way he holds Steve’s hand in his own warm grip. “I don’t know if I’m worth that.”

“Even if it escalates,” Steve says, touching the tenderly exposed inside of his wrist, “you’re worth it. You’ll always be worth it.” James looks at him, long and steady - a strange sort of expression, doubt and belief warring across his features. His eyes search Steve’s face, and Steve can only hope he sees the truthfulness there, the sincerity. Steve takes a breath, looks away from James’s electrifying gaze for a moment. “If anything, I’m the one who’s not worth it.”

“Because you programmed me?” James asks, his voice knowing - too knowing. Steve looks up suspiciously to find Sam, having poked his head out to eavesdrop shamelessly, disappearing once again into his kitchen.

“Traitor,” he mutters anyway at the door left ajar. There is no response from Sam, except to start washing plates very loudly; James, however, frowns a little.

“I did ask him what was happening to you, and I’m glad he told me,” he says, a little defensively. “You shouldn’t be blaming yourself. You’re the one who got me out.”

“I should’ve -”

“You _shouldn’t_ blame yourself over something you had no control over and no idea about,” James says stoutly. “It’s idiotic.”

“Well,” Steve says. “Thanks. I think.”

James squints at him. “You believe me?”

“Maybe,” Steve admits. “Intellectually.”

James gives him a sort of rueful half-smile that is hard to look away from. “I guess it’d make me a hypocrite to push for anything more,” he says, and laughs lightly at the way that Steve bounces back up, ready to argue for James if the man himself won’t. “Tell you what,” he says, “let’s make a deal.”

“A deal?” Steve asks, suspicious.

“If you try to believe me, I’ll try to believe you,” James says simply. Steve looks at him; his first instinct has him breathing in to protest, and his second realising that he can’t do anything of the sort.

“Fine,” he says, a little grudgingly, holding out one hand. James smiles and takes it, shakes firmly. His hand - or perhaps both their hands - are slow to pull away, their palms lingering against each other.

“And thank fuck for that,” Sam says, choosing this moment to come out of the kitchen. “The food’s getting cold.” They both turn towards him, the moment vanishing.

None of them want to talk about HYDRA or SHIELD or mental conditioning over food, so in silent mutual agreement their conversation steers earnestly, if awkwardly, away from all of those topics. They range from Sam’s new schedule at the VA to the bakery that’s opened around the corner to the virtues of street art, particularly the artfully drawn dick and balls Sam had found a few blocks down, and it’s pleasant, but as soon as the food has gone and they fall silent Steve can feel the oppressive silence of all the things that they’re not talking about pressing in close around them. It’s almost a relief when they face those topics openly once again.

The most important development - or non-development, as it were - is that James’s memory has not been any more cooperative; all he remembers, still, are fits and starts that he can’t even say that he’s sure about. He remembers, he says, rummaging around in the boot of a car; smashing a series of glass bottles; huddling on the edge of a cliff in the snow; a shouting crowd in a cinema. That last, he adds helpfully, had occurred to him after Sam made him watch Casablanca, and shed a few tears.

“And what about it?” Sam asks halfheartedly.

“It made me remember the crowd,” James says, with an obliviousness that is somewhat refreshing. “They were mostly crying, too. The shouting was because someone stood up.” He shrugs. “It’s not a lot, but it’s nicer stuff than what I usually remember.” His eyes flicker down, his shoulders slumping a little.

“Yes,” Steve murmurs, his mind turning to the self-confessed flashes of blood and horror that usually accompany the new pieces of James’s memory. This was the first time that any of them have heard about James’s life before the Soldier - one in which he was a classical film fan, apparently. Steve wouldn’t have taken him for the type, but he hadn’t thought Sam would be, either, which shows how much he knows. “Do you know your name?”

James hesitates, taken aback. “James?” he asks, somewhat tentative, and Steve immediately feels like kicking himself.

“No, no, of course - I mean, the name you have now is - I just meant,” he says finally, flustered, “maybe your legal name. Before HYDRA. If we could identify you -”

James shakes his head, but the shaking grows less and less emphatic until he has stopped completely, and is staring out into space. “I think,” he says, and doesn’t continue. The air around the table is tight with anticipation. “Someone called me Bucky,” he says slowly.

“What the hell kind of name is Bucky?” Sam asks at once.

“A nickname?” James offers. Steve resolves to look the name up anyway. Just in case.

He is so occupied with this resolution that he doesn’t see the conflict on James’s face until Sam says, “Remember what I told you?” in a tone that manages somehow to be both supportive and extremely bored. James scowls at him; when he meets Steve's gaze he ducks his head down, looking almost guilty.

“What did Sam tell you?” The words are pulled out of Steve’s mouth, tangled between curiosity and dread.

“I remembered one other thing,” James says, ignoring the question. Steve narrows his eyes, but he knows how to pick his battles. Or pretend to pick them, anyway.

“What’s that?”

James looks at the ground for a long, silent moment, head bowed; then he gathers himself, looking up once again. “I climbed a building to the twenty-seventh floor and then I shot the man in the neighbouring building,” he says stoutly. His voice doesn’t waver, but he wraps his arms around his stomach as though to protect himself from a blow that isn’t coming.

“Why?” Steve asks, his voice quieter than he’d given it permission to be. James looks down, looks away.

“It was my mission,” he says finally. “I don’t know why. I think he was a scientist.”

Steve knows that he should say something, but everything swirling through his head feels far too tepid and pointless to say out loud. James looks at him, a quick glance, and then he looks away. His shoulders slump. Steve hates that, hates the defeated look of him.

“Hey,” he says, mostly to distract James; it works, and he blurts out the first thing that comes into his head to keep the words flowing. “Remember our bargain.”

James frowns - a reaction that makes sense, given the non-sequitur. “Our bargain?”

“If it’s not my fault for not knowing, how can it be your fault when you were programmed to do it?” James is looking away again, dull heat rising in his cheeks, and Steve leans forward, presses his advantage. “Did you even have a choice?”

“I don’t know,” James mutters, a little bitterness threaded through his voice. “It never _occurred_ to me.”

“Because it wasn’t allowed to,” Steve insists. “You know I’m right,” he pushes, when James looks away again; those words bring that electric gaze snapping right back at him, the force of them feeling close to lightning.

“I might, but you don’t. You just - believe me.” James starts out angry, or tries to, but by the time he falls silent he’s tripped over the line into disbelief, quiet incredulity.

“Yeah,” Steve says, just as quiet, meeting his eyes squarely. “I do.”

Time goes a little strange when Steve’s trapped in James’s gaze - it could be anywhere from a second to an hour later that James finally looks away with a small shake of his head. “You’re - you’re -”

“An idiot?” Steve suggests sweetly. James scowls, mouth snapping shut as he reconsiders.

“A punk,” he says finally.

Steve blinks. Sam snorts, and the noise reminds him to say something.“That’s a new one.”

“It’s the right one,” James says resolutely, and stabs a pea, neatly bringing an end to the conversation. Sam sighs.

“You two are unbelievable,” he mutters. Steve sticks his tongue out, maturely, and James wrinkles his nose. Sam, apparently deciding that the latter move is more mature, wrinkles his nose right back at the two of them. “Sharon texted to say she has some information,” he says. “I told her she could come over, since we’re here anyway. And I need someone else to keep me from being the third wheel.”

Steve sputters and James frowns, oblivious again, his gaze flicking between them suspiciously. “Third wheel,” he repeats.

“It’s nothing,” Steve snaps, a little panicky, glaring at Sam, who only raises an eyebrow. “Sharon’s coming over, that’s - great, that’s great, d’you think she has something to help us?”

“She said she had information,” Sam says. “Not much else. Can you hurry up and wash your plate up before the rice becomes impossible to scrub?”

Sharon arrives sometime while Steve and James are washing the plates and wiping down the kitchen; they come out to find Sharon in Steve’s seat, and he yields it without a fight, too nervous to be stubborn.

“What’ve you got?” he asks her. He tries his best trying not to let anxiety or impatience leak into his tone; this is a massive favour that Sharon is doing him, he knows it. It’s just - easy to be demanding, when it feels like all he can think about is James, who has faded into the corner, obscuring himself with Sam’s couch. His lips are so tightly pursed that he looks like he doesn’t plan to open his mouth for at least the next century. Sam sits down, carefully unaware that his seat has placed him as close to James as he can get, carefully unaware of the way James relaxes a little at his now-familiar presence.

“Not much, which is something in and of itself,” Sharon says grimly. “There’s no trace of anything Winter Soldier in the whole SHIELD database, only a Soldier simulation. The official explanation is pretty much what you thought - that they’re developing a mission planning program. Past that, nothing. It’s so heavily redacted it’s above even my clearance level; all I get to see are black stripes.”

“Jesus,” Steve mutters. “Who does get to see it?”

“Level 8s and up, probably,” Sharon says, and shrugs at the sigh this gets from Steve. “It’s kind of uncommon for a project like that, but not so uncommon I can take it up with anyone. I _did_ find that there are only three official staff working on the simulation. You’re probably one of them, since you’re doing it on company time and all that.”

“So there’s only two other people managing everything?” Sam asks, doubt in his voice. “That seems -”

“Two other people on the simulation,” Sharon corrects. “I imagine there are more to deal with the - you know, actual real-life soldier. And they’d be way, _way_ off the books.” She turns to James, a little tenseness creeping into her posture. “I know that’s barely anything, and I’m sorry for it -”

James shakes his head, waves a hand. “It’s more than any of us could do,” he says quietly.

“It’s not enough,” Sharon says. “I think - I mean, we thought it did, but now - I think it goes deep. Like, really deep. Someone really high up is in on this.” Her face is set in entirely unhappy lines, and Steve can feel a reflected sort of unease sitting deep in his own chest. There are only a handful of people above Sharon’s Level 7 rank, and this program is redacted even from her. Not just redacted - from the way she talks about it she hadn’t even known it was in development, though by all rights it shouldn’t be that kind of secret, not a simple mission development program. That was - a different level of secrecy. A more concerning level.”I’ll keep looking, but - well, that was the bad news, I guess. I have better news.” She nods when Steve does, clears her throat and resettles. “So. I have a friend in the scientific department, and - well, I asked him if mind-control is a thing.”

“And?”

“Okay.” Sharon takes a breath. Sam folds his arms, as though bracing himself; Steve tries to do something similar. “So, it’s a project. That they’re working on.”

“Man, _why_ ,” Sam mutters, and Steve can’t help but agree. Sharon gives the pair of them a big, dramatic shrug.

“It’s not finished, though, so - that’s a problem for future us, if it ever finishes, and my friend was pretty sure the tech’s not at a place where it could be used. The other big possibility was the leftover scraps from the Chitauri invasion, but James doesn’t match those symptoms.”

“And what symptoms are those?” Steve asks. James still doesn’t speak.

“Blue light, chiefly. Apparently your eyes go black and -” She waves one hand vaguely “- funky, too.”

“Funky,” Steve mutters. Sharon shrugs apologetically.

“That’s not me,” James says. And then, unexpectedly, he continues, “I almost wish it was. It sounds like it hurts less.”

“Right, and so that’s my good news. Electric shocks like what you describe is pretty conclusively something that’d only ever work on an enhanced individual, but it _would_ work to wipe their memories.”

“How is that good news?” Steve asks doubtfully.

“No - wait, I’m getting there. It only works on an enhanced individual, but _because_ they’re enhanced they heal, so for the same reason it works on them, it has to wear off, like this constant cycle. We’ve actually got a case study in SHIELD with the Black Widow - I think we can confidently say that she’s made a pretty full recovery from whatever mindfuckery she went through, can’t we? If we can just keep you out of their clutches, James, we think your chances look good. Bearing in mind that my opinion is thoroughly un-medical, and my friend’s is more medical but less informed,” Sharon adds, a little rueful. James nods slowly.

“I guess so,” Steve says - doubtfully at first, and then stronger. “Do you know what happened to the Black Widow? Was it anything like -?”

“I don't know,” Sharon admits. “That's another thing that's redacted above my pay grade.”

“For good reason, though,” Sam points out, and neither of them can disagree.

A small, stifling pause goes by, and then Sharon leans forward, bracing her elbows on her knees, eyes bright and determined. “So that’s where we stand now. What do we do next?”

There isn’t really much they can plan, not with their current lack of information, but the conversation isn’t entirely a lost cause. They know where they are, now, and perhaps more importantly, Sharon’s emphasis of the word we is not an accidental thing; neither is the way that Sam leans forwards, both of them ready and willing to engage even at the threat of massive personal risk to themselves. It’s all Steve can do to to smile gratefully, helplessly, at the pair of them.

Surprisingly, James is the one to break the silence. “Can I talk to you?” he asks Sharon, standing - almost instinctively, by the looks of it, though he hadn’t seemed to be possessed by the same impulse when it was Steve or Sam standing. “Alone.”

Sharon looks at Steve, who looks at James, who remains unreadable. He stares alternately at Sharon and the walls.

“Sure,” Sharon says slowly. “Sam, can I - appropriate your kitchen for a little bit?”

“Sure,” Sam says, worry evident in his voice, in the way that he eyes James; he hasn’t been told about this, then, either.

“Don’t worry,” James says, apparently to both of them, as he enters the kitchen; Steve can’t speak for Sam, but he can say that this only has the effect of causing him to worry more. The door to the kitchen only has a narrow, lengthways window in it, and through it Steve can only make out flashes of James’s face, of Sharon’s. Neither of them seem particularly lighthearted.

“I hope you realise how sad you look right now,” Sam says bluntly, shaking Steve out of his trance for a moment.

“Sad?”

“Staring at the door James just went through,” Sam provides, smug for no discernible reason.

“I’m worried!”

“I’m not exactly relaxed, but I’m not staring at the door without blinking,” Sam says. “Come on, help me get the table cleaned up.”

There’s not a lot they can do without access to the kitchen; Sam turns the television on and Steve keeps sitting, poking at the assorted condiments that he can’t put back yet and trying not to look too hopelessly worried about whatever’s happening behind the closed kitchen door. James doesn’t keep Sharon in there for more than a few minutes, but it feels far longer. When the door finally opens, Sharon won’t meet Steve’s eyes, and that feels even worse.

“I want to go to Steve’s flat,” James says. Steve whips around to face him, Sharon’s downcast eyes momentarily fleeing his mind - he can feel how wide his own eyes are; Sharon’s eyebrows are raised, and Sam is the only one who seems extremely unsurprised by this announcement.

“You - isn’t it safe here?”

“There aren’t any bugs here,” James says, firm. “No SHIELD-issue cars have passed in the neighbourhood. I checked.”

“Then why -?”

“There might be bugs in your apartment,” James says. “There might be SHIELD-issue cars monitoring it.”

“All the more reason for you to stay here!”

“All the more reason for me to go with you! I can’t - I can help you, I _want_ to help you,” James says, his words rushing out of his mouth, overlapping and overzealous as he leans forwards earnestly. “I can tell you if it’s routine SHIELD exercise or monitoring SHIELD exercise. I can be indiscreet, you know that, it’ll be like you’re the only one there -”

“But it won’t be safe for you -”

“It won’t be safe for _you_ if I don’t at least check,” James retorts. Steve stares at him - gets a little lost staring at him, admittedly, until Sam’s quiet snort and Sharon’s incredulous breath pulls him out of his own thoughts. He makes a mental note to glare at the two of them in a moment, but right now he keeps his gaze locked on James, who looks right back at him, open and unafraid. “I know you don’t need my help,” he says quietly. “But I want to give it, anyway.” Steve looks at him, looks at the line of his clenched jaw, and thinks _oh, no_.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine.” The smile that breaks out over James’s face is practically enough to settle his many doubts.

“I really see what you mean about being the third wheel,” Sharon says to Sam, her voice a little awed as she stares between Steve and James.

“Let’s clean up and head out,” Steve says, a suspicious sort of colour rising in his cheeks as James looks between him and the others. “Comments from the peanut gallery _not_ appreciated.” Sharon and Sam both roll their eyes quite magnificently at this, but allow Steve to leave without further comment, to drag James out the door and settle him in the back of the car once again.

“Can’t say I’m not glad to see those boots go,” Sam observes, peering in the window as James disguises himself artfully with his tac gear, the aforementioned boots resting on his thighs. “Take care of each other.”

“I will,” Steve says, at the exact same time that James says the exact same thing. Sam looks between them with a smirk on his face, and Steve hits the pedal, blushing furiously and suddenly terribly glad that James is in the back. He hasn’t commented on any of the unsubtle digs all night, and Steve truly can’t decide whether that’s something he’s glad of or not. It all hinged on why he was silent - and though Steve gathers enough courage to peer into the rearview mirror, he doesn’t so much as see James’s face, let alone gain any insight as to his motivations.

He doesn’t speak again; the drive is silent, and James silent along with it. They’re not stopped by anyone, not spotted by anyone, and soon enough they’re back in front of Steve’s apartment building and James is gently working his way out of the car, slowly making his way to the entrance. His ability to manipulate himself into his surroundings is astonishing, even during that relatively short walk; he sticks to shadows, skulks next to walls, and for a man who is so big Steve is almost impressively afraid of losing him. 

James puts a finger to his mouth outside the apartment, and Steve nods, trying to stand utterly still, to breathe completely silently. Watching his sweep the apartment feels unreal - not just because he’s almost impossibly quick, or terrifyingly efficient, but because he conducts the whole affair in silence. Steve feels for a handful of uneasy moments as though he’s watching a tableau from another world, something through a muted screen, and then James will turn back to him to give him a nod or an approving hand gesture or a reassuring look, and the world sets itself to rights before tilting again.

To say that James is thorough would be an understatement; Steve is thorough, Sharon is thorough. He’s not sure there are words for what James is. He goes so far as to investigate the piping, pull up a few floorboards, and though it doesn’t seem likely that anyone would want to muffle their feed under a thick layer of metal or wood h clearly knows what he’s doing, because he finds two bugs Steve hadn’t caught: one is indeed under the floorboards, in the living room, and the other in a neatly plastered-over hole above his bed. Chills go down Steve’s spine, looking at them; he knows he hasn’t said anything incriminating in the flat, that was something, but the thought that someone has come in here and not only rifled through his things but also performed minor renovations without him noticing is a terrifying one. There hadn’t been any discolouration in the ceiling, not to his eye. He resolves to move the next chance he gets, though that might not be for a long while.

Quietly, James pads over to him, both bugs in hand, turning them over until Steve sees a small, pin-sized hole in each. Once he’s sure that Steve has committed the detail to memory, once Steve has nodded his comprehension, James takes a small needle out of one of his many pockets and drives it into each hole, his aim unerring. Both let out a little popping noise, and seem to sigh in his hand; Steve feels much the same, like he is deflating.

“Safe now,” James murmurs, his voice still low and quiet, his words scraping over each other like gravel.

“You’re sure?” Steve asks unnecessarily; James snorts, and does not deign him with a response. Steve shrugs and beckons for the bugs, which are handed over; they’re like nothing he’s ever seen before, far more sophisticated than the ones he’d found, small and sleek and vaguely malleable in his hands. “I’ve never seen this before.”

“I recognise them. It’s HYDRA tech,” James says grimly.

“Should we have deactivated them, then?”

“I think so,” James says; though his words are not, his tone is certain. “Any solid SHIELD agent would’ve found the bugs you did, and a good one would’ve been on the alert for others and able to find that weak spot.” Steve nods, still turning the little bugs over between his fingers, rolling them around. It’s hard to take his eyes off them, the silvery gleam of them.

“Thank you,” he says finally, looking up.

Of everything that has happened that evening, everything they’ve talked about, those are the words that bring a blush to James’s face, that make him duck his head a little and flush.

“You’re welcome,” he says, positively stumbling over the words. “I’m glad I could help.”

“So am I,” Steve says, and can’t resist reaching out, gripping James’s forearm in equal parts gratitude and helpless fondness; it burns warmly underneath his skin, and wins him a small smile that seems to light up the flat.

For a moment the two of them stand there, connected by that simplest of touches; then James ducks his head again, blushing again. “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he murmurs, making his escape.

“No, come on -” Steve tries, but the door has already closed behind James, leaving Steve standing alone in his bedroom. He sighs. Tries not to feel the now-familiar warm fondness creeping up his chest, and mostly fails. He can hear James puttering around the living room, but by the time he peeks out the couch has been set up and settled in; there is no chance of his convincing James to take the bed. He grins ruefully, and James looks horrifyingly pleased with himself.

“Goodnight, Steve.”

“Goodnight, James.” Steve tries his best to grumble, but judging from the way that James’s smile widens he’s not entirely successful. His cheeks heat; he ducks back into his bedroom and goes to bed before this is noticed, hopefully. The corners of his eyes catch the edge of James’s smirk as he retreats, so that hope is probably not entirely fulfilled.


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing he does upon waking up is to tilt his head towards the door, trying to ascertain whether James is also up; the silence from the apartment indicates a negative, and Steve tiptoes out to his living room only to find a note propped up on the table. There is breakfast on the counter, and James has gone to do some surveillance. Steve frowns down at the letter, over at the counter, back down at the letter. He rather thinks that James’s priorities could use some re-ordering. Surely to perform any kind of surveillance was also to put oneself in danger of being surveilled - and that was the last thing that Steve wants for James, damn it.

The pancakes that James has left on the kitchen counter are almost good enough to cut through the sudden haze of worry in Steve’s mind. Almost. He still scowls the moment that James saunters back in through the front door, even as relief courses through his chest.

“Well, there’s a nice welcome,” James says with an overly cheerful nod. “And after eating all my pancakes, too.”

“They were good pancakes,” Steve says. “I’d have liked it if you stayed and ate them with me.”

“I ate my share while I cooked yours,” James says, so purposefully obtuse that he sets Steve’s teeth on edge.

“You know what I meant,” he says - almost snaps, and reins himself in just in time. He’s not James’s keeper, he just - has a vested interest in keeping him safe. And cavorting around on rooftops was the last thing that was going to keep James safe. He takes a breath, forces himself to meet James’s gaze calmly. “It’s dangerous to leave the apartment.”

“I know what I’m doing, Steve,” James says, almost kindly. “Do you want to hear what I found?”

That makes Steve sit up for an entirely different reason. “You found something?”

“Yes. There’s a SHIELD-issue car outside.” James gestures towards the window, and Steve peers at it anxiously, as though he will be able to see the car if he looks hard enough. “I guess you didn’t know about that?”

“No,” Steve murmurs. “What -”

“The agent inside was sleeping. They had no special equipment.”

“So I’m not under _really_ special surveillance,” Steve says weakly. It’s mostly a bad joke, but James considers the statement carefully and then inclines his head. “Oh.”

“It’s fine,” James says. “They didn’t even have infrared, and I think you might have noticed that I don’t make a habit of standing around your window where anyone could see me.”

“Oh, really,” Steve says weakly. James comes forward almost hesitantly, touches his shoulder.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” he says. “I - can go, now. If you want.” Steve stares at him, momentarily speechless, and James seems to take this as confusion. “I mean, I did what I came here to do -”

“Why would I want that?” Steve demands, and he doesn’t think he is supposed to feel the way that James’s hand relaxes on his shoulder. “No,” he says, a little calmer. “Don’t go. I’m sorry I -”

“It’s not a nice thing to have confirmed,” James says, sliding into the chair opposite Steve. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, thanks,” Steve says miserably. Not a nice thing to have confirmed was certainly a way to put it. He hadn’t realised how much he’d still been - well, hoping wasn’t the word. He knew by now that everything couldn’t be some strange wrong mistake, that HYDRA must truly be a part of SHIELD, but - well, James had been right. It was never going to get more pleasant, to have that confirmed in every different way it was true. James’s eyes are sharp on the way that Steve shifts uncomfortably.

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” he says quietly. “For a while, anyway.”

“What d’you mean, for a while?” Steve asks suspiciously. James shrugs one shoulder, evasive enough to raise Steve’s suspicious. “James?”

“I just don’t want to stay too long,” James says finally. “I don’t want to put you in danger. I came back here mostly to check on your situation, sure, but partly to move out of Sam’s house, too. He’s a good guy. I don’t want to lead HYDRA to him.”

“Well, it’s a little late for me,” Steve points out, and James scowls at him. “I just meant - even if you move away -”

“I know what you meant,” James grumbles. “I don’t have to like it.”

“You don’t,” Steve acquiesces. “I just want you to know that you can’t bring HYDRA to my doorstep if they’re here. And -” He hesitates, looks at James. “- I think it’d be a real help if you could monitor how HYDRA monitors me.”

James nods - a little thoughtful, a little suspicious. “Of course I will,” he says, and doesn’t mention anything about a timeframe, which - Steve is going to count as a win. He hesitates, and then asks, “How long do you think until Sharon gets back to - you?”

Steve eyes him, and it’s impossible not to note how he shifts a little on his feet, how he doesn’t entirely meet Steve’s eyes. The way that he’d acted last night, before talking to Sharon. Cold fear pools in Steve’s stomach. He pushes away the urge to ask what James had been talking to Sharon about; it was pretty clear that he isn’t meant to know, and the last thing he wants to do is disrespect James’s autonomy.

“Um,” he says instead, “I don’t know. It depends on what she’s looking for, mostly.” The look James shoots him is mostly guilty, his question having been seen through, but something on Steve’s face makes him straighten, makes him reach out a little.

“I don’t - I mean, it’s just a thought,” he says, almost apologetic. “It might not work. That’s why I don’t want to tell you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain yourself to me -” Steve starts anxiously, feeling more relieved and more worried all at once. James’s smile quiets his loud emotions.

“I know. I told you because you didn’t ask. I wanted to.”

“Thanks.” It is almost alarming, how quickly he can swing from one mood to the next like this, at nothing more than a gentle word from James. He has to tamp down on the smile that threatens his mouth. “I hope it works out.”

James breathes out, long and slow, and doesn’t reply except to sway close, like he wants to lean on Steve but doesn’t know whether he’ll be allowed. Steve, for his part, doesn’t know how to communicate that leaning would not only be allowed but welcomed; the best he can do is shuffle awkwardly close in his path towards the sink until he and James are pressed warmly together and Steve has abandoned the plates to the nearest horizontal surface. It must give him a crick in the neck, but James leans his head forwards so that it rests against Steve’s shoulder, and the tickle of hair against his neck makes him smile.

“Thank you,” James murmurs finally. “You’re kind.”

For once, Steve doesn’t demur at once. His, “Not entirely,” comes after a few seconds of contemplation. “I can’t say it’s not a little bit selfish.”

“No?” James asks, and there’s a quiet sort of smile in his voice.

“No,” Steve murmurs, taking James’s metal hand, tracing the fingers of it. The hard-worn lines and creases in the silver. For once, James doesn’t flinch away from the contact. “I like you a little for myself,” he tries lightly.

“I’ll tell you something,” James drawls, hints of a stronger accent peeking through his words, “I like you a little for myself, too.”

Steve feels a warm, pleased flush work its way through him; peeks up at James, whose look towards him can only be described as soft. There are a lot of reasons he lets the moment stay as it is, still and suspended, but chief among them is probably his own fears: that he’s in a position of power, that James doesn’t have enough of his own memories back to know what he’s looking for, that James knows exactly what he’s looking for and it doesn’t match what Steve is beginning to suspect he wants. That James is going to leave as soon as HYDRA is no longer on his back.

~*~

Having James back in the apartment feels like familiar territory: his tac gear littering corners and doorways, his presence steady and hovering. He smiles a little more, lets his footsteps be heard a little more, tries a few new things - tries cooking, and even has some of the simpler dishes down, thanks to Sam - but he’s familiar all the same. Steve’s not sure how he ought to feel about that.

In the face of radio silence from Sharon, of continued silence on the subject of being re-granted access to the Soldier simulation, Steve throws himself back into searching through whatever scraps he can search through. Of course, he knows perfectly well that there’s no chance at all of finding a missing person through a single name, even - or especially? - if that name is Bucky. There are so little results for it that James must be right, it must be some kind of nickname, though he can’t think of a name that would derive Bucky, and neither can James.

But then, knowing something intellectually doesn’t mean that the stubborn parts of him accept it, and none of that knowledge stops him from growing disproportionately frustrated when all he can find is that some university uses a Bucky Bear mascot and new parents on name websites would rather name their child Berryweather than Bucky. To make matters even worse, he hadn’t wanted to use his home laptop or hs work computer for research, which means that he’s stuck trying to make it all work on a public library computer so old that it’s running Windows Vista and twice as slow as his own laptop. He can’t count the number of times he nearly puts a hand through the screen, or sets the thing on fire. If it was his own machine, perhaps he’d give into the pleasures of wholesale destruction and immolation.

He has just resolved never to come to the library again, information be damned, because he _does_ have better things to be doing on a Sunday afternoon, when the chair beside him creaks under a new weight. The corner of Steve’s eye registers a familiar presence, and once his brain catches up and he realises what that means he whirls around, barely stopping himself from blurting out James’s name in the middle of a public place.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Steve hisses. James’s eyes crinkle, which means he is smiling cheerfully through the bright blue surgical mask covering half his face in a piss-poor excuse of a disguise.

“I was doing some recon,” James says. “You looked frustrated. Wanna get out of here?”

“I _am_ , but - you can’t just - what if someone sees you?”

“Several people’ve seen me,” James says. “One lady thanked me for wearing a mask in public.”

“That’s _not_ what I meant and you know it, you jerk,” Steve hisses.

“I’ll explain on the way back to your apartment,” James says, leaning over Steve to log out of the library computer. “Come on, let’s go.”

“What - why -?” Steve protests, even as he lets himself be dragged past several sets of shelves and down the fire escape.

“Do you always come to this library?” James asks. When they reach the bottom of the fire escape he sticks his head out and peers both ways, and it is only then that it begins to dawn on Steve that this is not just James being obnoxious.

“Yes,” he says. Even to his own ears, he sounds grim. James looks back sympathetically, reaches out to squeeze his wrist. “Are there -?”

“Yes,” James says grimly, evidently deciding that the street is safe and hauling Steve out into it with him. “You must have searched something they’ve got in their system.”

“And they sent out a task force based on that?” Steve asks disbelievingly. James shrugs.

“The Winter Soldier is a valuable asset.”

Steve breaths out. “How many?”

The set of James’s mouth is grim, and Steve feels the first flutters of fear in his ribcage. “Enough.”

“That’s not reassuring!”

“I’ll be reassuring when we get home,” James says tersely. His body language is at utter odds with his voice, his gait a rolling, easy thing that makes it look like he hasn’t got a care in the world. He reaches his arm out and slings it around Steve’s shoulder, pulling him close, and Steve lets himself be pulled.

“Where were they?”

“Working through the floors,” James says, and the swears. Steve tenses so hard he nearly stumbles, and his balancing struggles aren’t helped by the way that James pivots suddenly, sweeping him around. “It’s fine. We found another one of their cars.”

“Another?”

“They must have called a third one.”

“ _Third_?”

“The Winter Soldier is a _very_ valuable asset.” James swears, turns again to steer the two of them into an alley. Steve is getting better at following his lead, and barely stumbles this time.

“Would they start a fight in public?” he asks.

“Maybe. I’m more worried about them finding out who you are.”

When Steve risks a glance over his shoulder he sees a well-built guy, all in black and thin, badly-disguised tac gear, lounging against a streetlight. If this was any other situation he’d probably laugh: it’s not a very subtle look.

Then the guy looks towards them, and any thought of laughter flies out of Steve’s brain. He gazes up at James, eyes wide. “Get down here -”

“What?” James asks, letting himself be manhandled until his face isn’t even an inch away from Steve’s and his mask hangs limply around his neck. Steve has to fight not to lose his breath, not to tilt his head back a little more - he doesn’t think it’s his imagination that James’s gaze is lingering on his mouth -

“It’s something Sharon told me. Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable. He’ll look away. Is he?”

James’s eyes flicker over Steve’s shoulder; he moves just slightly, so that his eyes aren’t blocked by Steve’s head, and nods almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

Steve shudders, feels himself lean hard on the wall. “Thank fuck.”

Unexpectedly, James ducks forward and kisses him. Their watcher has turned away: this isn’t, can’t be, for their cover. It’s also not how Steve had imagined their first kiss was going to go, so fast that he blinks and suddenly James is a foot away, his mask pulled back over his face, peering out of their sheltered position and onto the street. “We still need to get out of here,” he says.

“I know that, let me have this,” Steve mutters, but his heart isn’t in the sting - all he has eyes for is James, whose gaze ducks away from Steve, whose cheeks are pink and blotchy. “Did you see where he went?” Steve asks, the sight of that blush making him feel a little softer.

“Right,” James says with another small shrug. “Let’s go.”

Steve doesn’t think that it’s his imagination that James holds him a little closer, a little tighter, as they fall into step.

Of course, the moment that they think they’re safe - the moment that Steve feels a gentle shiver of relaxation run through James’s body - is the moment that establishes they’re very much not. Which is to say: they cut through a back alley behind a bank, round a corner, and there’s a figure dressed in black leaning against the building. James swears under his breath, turns Steve around in a weak effort to protect his identity.

“Soldier,” a man’s voice says, gravelly and unfriendly. Steve can feel James bristle beside him, and then the stranger must step forward because James steps back, pressing at Steve to do the same until the three of them are alone. James’s hand keeps on pressing into his back, hard, hard, and the message to move is clear, but Steve can only bring himself to take one step, two, before slowing and stopping. “This doesn’t have to be unpleasant.”

James lunges forward so fast that air ripples against Steve’s back, and a there’s a sickening crunch. Steve waits for the thud of a fall’s impact, his heart leaping into his throat, but it doesn’t come; instead he hears a second punch thrown. The stranger grunts. Of course Steve turns around.

For one awful moment he can’t distinguish who’s who, which limbs belong to which person, and then something in his brain snaps into focus and he sees James, mouth curved in a snarl, duck and swing and swing again. His mask has fallen to the ground, and is promptly stepped on. Some of his hits land and some don’t, but Steve’s heart rate doesn’t know how to differentiate: it picks up and up again with every punch until it feels like Steve has some live animal in his chest, struggling to escape.

“You idiot,” James grits out between punches, and it takes Steve a moment to realise it’s directed at him. “ _Go_!” Steve ignores him, but the word spurs him into action of his own: he looks around frantically for a weapon, any weapon, _anything_ , but the street is maddeningly blank - someone cries out in pain behind him, and Steve knows without looking that it’s James, feels his chest shudder like he’s the one that’s been hit -

His mind utterly blank, he yanks off a shoe and throws it. James has to dodge, but perhaps he knows Steve well enough to have had an inkling that something of the sort had been coming; the stranger does not, or just has worse reflexes, and the brief, unexpected hit on his shoulder makes him pause, gives James just enough time to take advantage of his surprise and lunge -

The rush of his own blood and the thrill of his heartbeat settle loudly in Steve’s ears: he doesn’t hear the final punch, nor the impact of body to ground as the stranger falls, unmoving. Blood trickles out of James’s nose, which, along with his left eye, is already swelling.

“You’re an _idiot_ ,” James grinds out, picking up the shoe and throwing it back at Steve; despite the forceful way his arm movies, the fact that Steve knows he has excellent aim, it drops harmlessly in front of him.

“Well, it worked, didn’t?” If the way that James softens is any indication, Steve’s voice doesn’t entirely hide its tremble. Neither do his hands, although he can knot those together behind his back.

“Come on,” James says. “Let’s go.”

“You’re bleeding -”

“Let’s _go_ ,” James insists, and Steve doesn’t argue, just reaches up to try and wipe away the blood trickling from his nose. He doesn’t have anything to wipe with, though, so all he achieves is blood smeared over his fingers, which he wipes in turn on his shirt. He can wash it when they get home. If they get home, something insidious in his mind whispers. He banishes it.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, focusing on James instead. Their heads tilt towards each other, and James’s hair hangs down to shield his face. There’s a tenseness to his face that doesn’t spell out good things.

“Fine. It’s already healing.” That may be a slight overstatement, but the bleeding has stopped, at least.

They don’t run into any other operatives on the way back to the apartment, and that turns out to be a terribly good thing - perhaps it’s simply that time, or perhaps it was the fight, but James’s memory has decided to begin cooperating, slowly shuffling and contextualising fragments of his past as though suddenly unlocked. Which is the most positive spin that Steve can put on the situation: what it translates to in reality is James clenching his jaw in pain, rubbing his temples in a futile effort to ease the ache in his head, tense lines around his eyes. What it translates to in reality is fingernail marks on his palm and pain shadowing his eyes, a painful, crawling consumption of James until he is barely sensate, barely able to keep walking.

“Come on,” Steve says, as gentle as he can be while practically shoving him through the apartment building. “Come on, we’ll get you to bed, just a few more steps, come on -”

“There’s so much blood,” James says, which doesn’t seem like a good sign at all. Steve checks his nose again, but he knows before he sees the clean skin that’s not what James is talking about.

He goes down without protest, but as soon as Steve tries to leave James is back on his feet.

“No, you - stay…” Steve trails off when he sees James’s face. He can’t _not_ : the pleading expression James wears is so raw. In the end, he’s the one who stays, and James tucks him in close underneath his chin. He’s silent for a moment, and then -

“I was in Russia.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Steve whispers.

“I want to,” James replies, just as quiet. “But you don’t have to hear.”

Steve shifts to look up at James. Even lying down, his shoulders slump and his face is tired underneath its bruises. He looks like there’s a great weight on his shoulders.

“Tell me.”

James does, and Steve wants to weep, wants to throw up, wants to tear the world apart and set it on fire. He hears about Russia and the Red Room, about America and HYDRA, about mission after mission, about the one time James had tried to run away and had been brought back with a team much like the one they’d evaded today.

It makes it a little better, to hear it from James, beside him, but - not much. There isn’t anything in the world, Steve thinks, that could soften this blow.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. The words are lukewarm and trite in his mouth, but he has to say _something_. “God, I’m so sorry.”

James doesn’t answer, and for a moment Steve is terrified that he’s going to say something like _apology not accepted_ and leave through the window and escape, or get recaptured without Steve ever knowing -

“I wish I could remember before,” James says, voice far away. “I don’t - I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Steve swears at once, sitting up straight. “It does matter. You’re important. Who you were is important and who you _are_ is important.”

“I know you’re right,” James says on a sigh: there’s a _but_ lingering in his tone.

“Let me get you something to eat,” Steve says. “And something for that nose.”

“Let you,” James repeats, incredulous, but Steve has already made his retreat. When he returns his arms are loaded with leftovers, with a damp towel, with a first-aid kit. James murmurs his thanks and allows himself to be fussed over in silence, going limp and pliable under Steve’s fierce ministrations, unfurling in a way that makes Steve think of flowers in the sun.

“Sleep,” Steve says finally, reluctantly, standing up. “It’s been a day.”

“For you too,” James murmurs. “Stay. We’ll nap.”

“I - sure,” Steve says, because he can’t pretend that the day hasn’t wiped him out, even if it hadn’t been as physically demanding. Now that he hasn’t got anything - or anyone - to focus on he can feel exhaustion seeping in until he’s just about ready to fall over. “Sure.”

~*~

When Steve gets into work the next day the first thing he sees is his supervisor, who is unusually pale and unhappy, and then the first thing his supervisor does is beckon him over and tell him that he’s done.

“What?” he asks - numb, incredulous. Afraid. “ _Why_?”

“I don’t know,” is all he gets in response. “It’s from up high. I’m sorry.” He’s in and out of the building in twenty minutes.

He stands in front of the building for a long time, getting weird looks from the last wave of employees as they trickle inside to start the working day. All he can think is that they know, that someone knows, and that he’s going to be killed on the way home, probably.

He texts Sharon, because if he is about to die then he wants someone to know about it; she leaves him on read, which seems particularly cruel and unusual given the circumstances, but by the time that he - against all odds, or so it seems inside his head - gets back to his apartment, she’s there, sitting cross-legged next to James.

“Sharon?” he asks, although there’s really nobody else it could be.

“I called in a day off,” Sharon says.

“You found something?” The question sounds desperate even to his own ears, but he can’t be too angry about it - he thinks he deserves some good news after the total recent lack of it, and he’s being excited enough for two, because James is lurking in the corner of the room, holding something small that glints and doing what can only be described as brooding.

“No,” Sharon says, and looks sideways at James. He doesn’t respond, and she sighs quietly, looks back at Steve. For the first time, he notices the rather nasty-looking metal contraption on her lap. “This is...his thing.”

“His thing,” Steve repeats. He looks between the two of them, and Sharon glares pointedly at James until he sighs and rolls to his feet.

“This,” he says, and his handful clatters onto the table: two silvery bugs and two translucent discs. “It panned out.”

“Bugs?” Steve has to ask, when no further explanation if offered. James seems to shrink in on himself.

“Next time,” he says quietly, “the HYDRA team catches up with me.” In the moment between sentences, dread starts to build in Steve’s chest, paid off by James’s next words. “I’m going with them.”

“You - what,” Steve says flatly. His mind fels dangerously blank. “What.”

“I want to go back,” James repeats, mouth set and stubborn.

“I don’t understand.”

“To HYDRA.”

Steve takes a breath, and then takes another. He doesn’t know what to say; he doesn’t know if there’s anything for him to say. James just keeps looking at him, his gaze maddeningly calm through his own clear discomfort. “I don’t understand.”

“I want,” James says carefully, “to help collect evidence of their existence.”

“Please,” Steve says, and somehow it’s less than a whisper. “Don’t. Don’t do that. There’s other - we can get you away - they’ll wipe you again, they’ll torture you!”

“And with these you’ll hear every second.” James indicates the bugs on the table, and Steve doesn't think he’s ever hated machinery with such a passion.

“And with this -” Sharon holds up one of the flat translucent circles. “No wiping.”

“As long as I am functional I will not be disposed of,” James says, which is a very positive sign with regards to how much he trusts the little rubber circles.

“That’s ridiculous,” Steve breathes. “Sharon, tell him. That’s _ridiculous_.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Sharon agrees. “It’s also our best chance at catching these fuckers.”

“ _Sharon_ -”

“These work, Steve. D’you think I’d bring them over if they didn’t? They work in wind and rain and they keep working when it’s freezing or boiling in the scientific sense of the word. They can be subdermal implants or they can be part of a suit, but either way they block electric currents. All we have to do is get them into his temples.” She raises the metal contraption off her lap and wiggles it around.

“We?” Steve squawks. Sharon raises an eyebrow, and Steve folds like wet paper, wordlessly fetching the first aid kit out from under the sink. He can’t imagine performing homemade surgery on James; he can’t imagine standing outside the room as it’s happening.

For all that steve cringes his way through it, it’s done remarkably quickly: the two bugs go into James’s shoulder relatively painlessly, as close to the metal joint as possible, and then Sharon does something with the settings and there’s a moment of whirring, a moment of tension, and James is relaxing again. The blood seeping down his temples, down his cheeks, is the only proof that they’ve done anything at all. It seems like an excessive amount, but head wounds are always terrible; Steve grits his teeth through it and forces equally excessive amounts of fluid down an unprotesting James’s throat until the cuts close and heal up; perhaps it’s because he’s enhanced, or perhaps the implants are just that thin, but there’s no discernible difference to the shape of his head, no strange grotesque lumps at his temples. There’s barely even a scar, after an hour; Steve shouldn’t be disappointed that their homegrown operation did well, but it just means that James is free to leave.

As if on cue, James stands. “I should go -”

“You should _not_ ,” Steve snaps, and James raises an eyebrow at him. “We don’t even know if it works -”

“It works,” James says. “I can feel them. They’re not moving.” 

“Much or at all?”

“At all,” James says, eyes wrinkling a little in another sort of smile. Steve looks at him, at his forehead, tries to memorise the barely-different shape of it. “Stop worrying.”

“Oh, stop worrying,” Steve mutters. “That’s great advice.”

“ _That’s great advice_ ,” Sharon’s laptop mimics. Steve jerks backwards and blinks.

“What?” he makes the mistake of asking, and cringes through the laptop’s rendition of his voice, made even worse by bad speakers.

Sharon, of course, hits a key before she talks, and isn’t subjected to such an echo. “The transmitter works,” she says.

“And the recorder?” James asks.

“It works,” Sharon says gently. “The transmitter can only transmit what’s recorded.”

James nods once, a little jerky. Breathes out, and nods again, and this time that glint of determination is back in his eye.

“Wait,” Steve says, his mind jumpy and chaotic. “Wait, one moment, I -” He runs into his room and digs up that old code he’d drafted - so long ago, it seemed, when he was fixed on getting James out of HYDRA. His hands shake a little as he transfers it onto a thumbdrive.

“What is it?” He can feel James’s gaze on his back.

“It’s a program - if you plug it into a computer in their network it’ll give you the option of downloading all the information it can find, or putting it online. Download takes longer, so if you’re pressed for time just hit the online option and go.” Steve thinks it’s to his credit that his hands don’t shake when he passes the thing over. James’s grip is warm, and his fingers brush over Steve’s palm.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“James -”

“Don’t.” James looks down at Steve, heartbreaking. “I might actually stay, if you asked.” Steve takes a breath. Shuts his mouth. “I’ll be fine. I’ll - it’ll be worth it.” His voice is soft. Steve doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince.

“I hope so,” he says. “I’ll be listening. We both will.”

James nods, sways back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.” Quiet, looking at the door as though it’s a mortal enemy he has to defeat with his hands tied behind his back. They all know that it’s not going to take long for HYDRA to come and collect him, once he’s out in the open.

It’s the hardest thing in the world to watch James walk away. His name tears out of Steve’s throat, agonised, and then he’s by the door, too, staring up at those sweet familiar features. James frames his face and kisses him, everything that the alleyway kiss hadn’t been, warm and long and all-encompassing. Steve is pretty sure he’s weak at the knees when James pulls away - and he’s pretty sure that had been the point of it, because James uses the moment of befuddlement to move criminally far away.

“Now you have to come back,” Steve says to him, out in the corridor. The other side of the doorway has never felt like such an insurmountable distance.

“To you?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, once he’s sure his voice will stand it. “Come back to me. Come back.”

“Stay safe and I will.”

They watch each other, and there’s a steady certainty in James’s gaze that does wonders for Steve’s spirit. He forces himself to blink - long, slow - and when he opens his eyes again James has gone.

~*~

Sharon takes him to one of her safehouses, and this time it is Steve lying down in the back of her car covered in stuff. Like he’s on the run, he thinks, and immediately wants to roll his eyes at himself. He is on the run, in most every sense of the word.

“Aren’t you going to get in trouble for appropriating a safehouse?” he asks, voice a little muffled and wheezy because his laptop has been slapped onto his chest.

“Only if they find out,” Sharon says, which isn’t an answer that inspires confidence. “We do get warning, you know, when we’re about to put a safehouse to use. We’ll move you.”

The safehouse is in a condemned apartment building, bare and blank, positively Spartan, but Steve hadn’t been expecting anything more. Sharon drags him past the designated safe apartment and installs him one floor up, tells him not to stomp too loudly, not to linger near windows, not to draw attention to himself in any way.

“Sharon,” Steve says, before she can make her own escape. “Are you - alright?”

“My boss doesn’t suspect anything, not yet,” Sharon says, which isn’t an answer. “But I have been distracted. I think he’s noticed that, at least.”

“Haven’t we all,” Steve mutters. She smiles, but it’s tired. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this. Is there anyone you can - talk to?” As soon as the words are out of his mouth he regrets them, because Sharon’s face goes tight and pained upon hearing them. The shake of her head is jerky, as though pulled in strings, and - Steve’s mind has crawled over the other people in his office a hundred times, a thousand, wondering if any of them could be working for HYDRA, knowingly or unknowingly. In Sharon’s position, amongst fellow field agents she is close to, the same questions must be a lot harder to ask.

“You don’t get past Level 7 without being a little...Machiavellian,” she says eventually, which is only a thinly veiled way of saying that she thinks everyone around her could be a mole. She sighs, shrugs. She looks tired, her face pale and drawn, dark shadows lingering under her eyes. “It’ll be over soon. I’m holding onto that.”

Steve can’t offer her anything more comforting than that. When she withdraws, she leaves him in the small, ramshackle apartment with only the receivers of James’s bugs for company, and he can’t offer himself anything more comforting, either.

James’s bugs, when he opens the program, only relay the sounds of the city: cars, buses, people chattering. It sounds so harmless, but Steve’s mind flashes immediately to all the ways that this could go wrong, all the ways that the _four_ subdermal implants James is carrying around inside his body could harm him - amplifying electricity or collecting it until it explodes outwards in some other form, perhaps raising the skin enough that someone figures out what lies beneath -

Steve shudders back, covers his face. Wants to turn the laptop off but can’t bring himself to, not when he has to listen to what’s happening to James. There isn’t much else for him to do, now - freshly unemployed and in an empty apartment.

~*~

In a matter of hours, James is picked up by HYDRA, and the laptop is recording it. The journey is about twenty minutes, their destination secret enough or well-known enough that nobody says its address - in fact, nobody says a word for the duration of it beyond a single, abrupt, “Shut up,” when James shifts his weight.

He goes back to monosyllabic, mechanical phrases, convincing enough that Steve has to remind himself it isn’t real; he hasn’t even been reconditioned yet. He’d known perfectly well that this was going to happen; James is monitored from every angle, with every sense that HYDRA has at their disposal. There’s no way for him to make any sign, send any signal. But again: knowing a thing doesn’t make it easier to bear. Steve hates it, feels like he’s going to jump out of his skin every time a noise crackles through protesting laptop speakers.

They listen as Bucky is directed into a chair, they listen as urgent voices argue about whether to send him into ice or on a mission, they listen as he’s wiped. One particularly authoritative voice tells them to up the volts - two hundred, three, three-fifty. Steve wants to throw up. All he can do is sit uselessly and hope that their implants are blocking it - if not all, then enough. It’s an awful thing to be hoping. It’s a worse thing to have to keep hoping, day in and day out.

Information comes in agonisingly slowly, and Steve listens to it all, listens again, transcribes and re-transcribes and compares against himself. It’s slow and time-consuming and makes his sudden firing look almost like a blessing in disguise for how much more he can focus on James’s audio feed. The name of a target dropped here, the name of a building there. A complaint about having to identify themselves with fucking blood every time they want to access the high-security sections of the building. A few names that make Steve’s eyes water with how high up in SHIELD they are. A café across the street, another one around the corner: HYDRA agents have to eat, too. There’s something funny about the way that this is the vulnerability that tells him where they are, this utterly human thing. 

Sam comes by as much as he can between shifts, double-checks Steve’s work, “to make sure you’re not losing it on me, Rogers.” The last thing that any of them needs is for Steve to start losing focus. Sharon sneaks by when she thinks she can, which is less often since her boss started keeping an eye on her. She does what she can, they both do, and it’s enough. It’s enough to keep Steve in his right mind until Murphy’s Law decides to make an appearance, and the worst thing that can happen does happen.

And the thing that happens is: James is slightly too slow to respond to an order to move. There’s a thick, meaty sound that Steve has come to know means a punch, and then there’s a crackle and a sudden, ominous silence.

Steve has not been without the vague noise of speakers for days. The silence feels oppressive, somehow. Heavy. He tries everything he can on the laptop to kickstart the stream again, but he knows even as he does that it’s not going to work. The problem is entirely out of his hands.

For now, he thinks determinedly, and starts double-checking his transcripts.

Sharon takes her lunch break as soon as he texts, and she goes pale and drawn - paler and more drawn - as soon as she steps over the threshold and doesn’t hear the habitual static. “Oh, no,” she says. It’s all she has to say; she looks at Steve, and he nods. “Oh, _God_.”

“Are they both down?”

“They’re both down,” Steve says grimly. “And even if they weren’t - the recorder doesn’t have any memory of its own.”

“I know. I know, I just -” Sharon looks like she doesn’t know whether to crumple to the ground or punch a wall.

“We have to get him.” That has her head snapping up, her eyes wide and horrified.

“You can’t -”

“I have to! Someone punched him in the shoulder, there’s a good to excellent chance they figured it out - they probably felt the bugs, or heard them break, and I can’t just _sit_ here -” He takes a breath. “I know where their headquarters are. I know what time the shifts change. I know what level they keep James in.”

“You don’t know how many agents they have,” Sharon counters. “Their security system. Their -”

“I can find out,” Steve says.

“How,” Sharon demands, voice utterly flat.

Steve tells her. Despite herself, Sharon looks a little impressed, and despite herself, she starts adding her own ideas, fleshing it out. The next thing they know, she’s called in sick for the rest of the day.

~*~

Though she insists she’s doing it for James and the wellbeing of America, Steve is pretty sure that Sharon signs onto his plan mostly because it involves an opportunity to scare the living daylights out of Jasper Sitwell for access to the building. He’s not high enough on the SHIELD ladder to have come into contact with the man himself, but Sharon has complained about him at length, from the way he organises missions to the way that he budgets departments, so Steve doesn’t feel too terrible about giving her free rein to get what they need.

They’re both hiding their faces as they watch the skyscraper of an office building that doubles as HYDRA headquarters, Sharon hunched over to hide her face behind her laptop as she peruses her notes from the last seminar she’d attended - about advanced interrogative methods - and Steve not quite as prepared, holding a coffee cup up to his mouth and desperately tilting his head to keep his sunglasses from falling off his nose. The two of them are so occupied with their various forms of disguise that they nearly miss Sitwell walking out of the Lerna Insurance building.

He’s sort of pale and stumbling a little, heading in their direction. Beside him is a tall guy that Steve doesn’t recognise, though the all-black tac gear rings a bell.

“Ugh, it almost feels too easy if he’s sick,” Sharon mutters. The closer Sitwell gets to them the worse he looks: Steve can see sweat beading on his forehead, a tremor in his hands. Steve frowns, but Sharon’s already in motion. “Jasper!”

“Uh -” Sitwell tries, but Sharon is already steering him into a seat beside her, his bodyguard following without protest.

“You’re not looking well, everything okay?”

“Not really, actually -”

“Steve?” The voice is James’s, and Steve can only stare, because it’s coming from the unfamiliar bodyguard who most definitely isn’t James. The man looks at Steve expectantly, and then he seems to remember something because he’s reaching up to his ear and - and _peeling his face off_ , and that’s James, underneath it, with a crumpled mask in his hand.

“James?” Steve manages to say; he’s rather surprised he managed even that, considering his mouth wants nothing more than to hang open. “Since when have we been able to do that?”

“And we had a whole plan to rescue you, too,” Sharon says - in the tone of a complaint, but she scrapes her chair across the ground and hugs him.

“Do I want to hear this plan?” James asks wryly - and God, it really is him, and the relief of it threatens to send Steve crashing to the ground.

“Probably not,” he says, words scraping against each other. “It involved my pretending to have been converted.” James scowls at him at once.

“No offence, but I’m glad you didn’t get the chance.”

“I can’t believe you - what is that?” Steve asks, letting the insult pass him by and reaching out to touch the crumpled mask in James’s hand. He shrugs.

“I stole it for them,” he says. “From a scientist’s house. Felt alright taking it from them.”

“Is this really what we want to be talking about now?” Sharon hisses. Steve has enough presence of mind to shake his head, but - _changing faces_. That was a hell of a trick.

“I guess you figured out what happened,” James says, and though he’s too tense to let his hand go to his shoulder, something about the way he shifts it makes Steve think that it’s hurting - either because the bugs were dug out or because they haven’t been. “They figured me out. Don’t be sorry,” he says sharply, before Steve can say that he is. “I knew the risk I was taking.”

“What happened?” Steve forces himself to ask instead.

“More reconditioning,” James says. “And when they thought I couldn’t hear, they planned a set-up.” His smile, when it spreads over his face, is entirely grim. “Let’s say I took the idea to heart.” He slides a familiar thumbdrive over the table, and Sitwell exhales in the manner of a man whose last hope is being extinguished. “I think you’ll find these useful.”

“I very much hope you’re right,” Sharon says, scooping it up in an instant. James nods, and then he points at Sitwell.

“And a live witness. He’s even promised to cooperate.”

“That’s me,” Sitwell says weakly, when Sharon raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Cooperative.”

“Are you alright?” Steve asks. James looks at him - surprised for a moment, and then he softens.

“Yes. The sooner we’re done with this, the better."

“God,” Sharon says weakly. “ _God_.”

Steve cranes his neck to see what she’s staring at, and once he finds out he feels like staring blankly and blaspheming, too. There’s _so much_ information - so much that HYDRA has done, scrolling past his disbelieving eyes.

“Wait - stop, stop it, there,” he says, and Sharon has the presence of mind to do so. “Is that -?”

“More simulations,” Sharon says. “Two more. Mercenary and Psychopath. God, those poor bastards.”

Steve drags the laptop closer to him, trying to read everything all at once. What’s clear is that HYDRA had been experimenting with different levels of mindfuckery - the man named Frank Castle had been fucked with in an entirely different way, his brain and personality reset and rewired to suit HYDRA’s purposes, and then he’d been turned loose on Hell’s Kitchen, still under the impression that he was thinking for himself. And then someone called Pierce had used the results of the other two experiments to engage in some light mental enhancement. Steve taps the computer screen. “Not so poor for Mr. Pierce.”

Sharon grabs the laptop back, unexpected and abrupt, and suddenly she is the one searching through the wealth of new information in a frenzy. “Pierce,” she says, and her eyes raise to meet Steve’s. “Alexander Pierce.”

“Not -”

“The Secretary of Defence,” Sitwell confirms; despite his earlier promise to cooperate, he sounds positively malevolent about it. “We’re everywhere. You can’t stop us.”

“Not alone,” Sharon says, and pulls up the Internet, turning the laptop a little to show off what she’s doing. Despite everything it drags a gasp out of Sitwell, scrapy and shocked.

“You can’t -”

“Oh, I very much can.”

“Think about what you’re doing,” Sitwell snaps. “Everything you’ve worked for, everything your _family_ worked for -”

“It’s about to be cleansed,” Sharon agrees peacefully. Her hand underneath the table is holding tightly to her chair, but her face is utterly serene. “Like lancing a boil.”

“All that sensitive information online -”

“Better there than with you.”

Sitwell moves as though to lunge over the table when Sharon hits her keyboard, the movement offensively wide and obvious. James grabs the back of his neck and forces him to sit back down, and it doesn’t even look like it cost him much effort.

“It’s done,” Sharon says, eyes on her screen. “It’s done.” Nobody around them, not one single person in the coffee shop, has any idea of what’s just happened; their chatter continues, the clinking of cups and humming of machines still permeating the air. It’ll be a few hours until the news cycle can really get its teeth into this, but for now - the world keeps turning.

Sharon turns her laptop around, and they can see the files, the fully green bar. “It’s done,” James repeats, but his eyes are on Steve, his gaze hot and purposeful enough that it drives the air from Steve’s lungs.

“You’re free.”

Sharon’s phone, until now quite silent, begins buzzing wildly. The grin on her face when she looks at the messages is almost frightening, and she turns to show Steve the newest text: one from Maria Hill, that says _Nick wants to talk_.

“He’s alive?” Steve asks, and surely there is an upper limit on how surprised a person could feel in a day.

“So it seems. You,” she says to Sitwell, who mostly looks absolutely miserable, now, “are absolutely not free. Let’s go.”

Sitwell goes without complaint, and that leaves Steve and James, together in their own small bubble and also apparently responsible for footing the bill.

“I found out my name,” James says.

“Did you?”

“It actually is James.” Steve can’t tell whether he’s on the verge of laughter or tears; when he looks, James is staring at him, a little stiff. “James Buchanan Barnes. You can call me Bucky, if you want. It was my nickname.”

“I might take you up on that. It’s good to see you, Bucky,” Steve says, and has to grin. “From Buchanan? I feel a less bad about not being able to figure that one out.”

“I was born in 1917.”

Steve freezes. There really is no upper limit on surprise, he thinks hazily, staring at Bucky. “What?”

“They kept me frozen for so long between missions...1917. Is when I was born.” He hunches into himself at Steve’s gobsmacked silence. “I don’t know how that - how you feel about that -”

“I don’t,” Steve says, and gets a disbelieving look for his trouble. “I don’t! Why would I?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, a little flustered, a little cute. “I thought -”

“Well, don’t,” Steve says imperiously, and grins when Bucky glares. “It’s - sure, it’s unusual, but it’s no more unusual than how we met. The things I was doing to you -”

“I told you not to blame yourself for that,” Bucky says. He’s sweet in the sunlight, wrinkles forming on his forehead as it gets in his eyes.

“And I asked you to come back to me.”

“I did. That.” The wariness has gone out of Bucky’s face as he watches Steve inch closer to him.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs, abandoning any pretence of propriety and settling himself on Bucky’s thighs. “Yeah, you did.” They’re wolf-whistled out of the cafe, but Bucky is smiling even as he ducks his head, and he holds Steve’s hand like he plans never to let go.


End file.
